From start to finish the afternoon that confirmed Bundesliga champions Bayer Leverkusen as unbeaten Bundesliga champions Bayer Leverkusen was what has come to be typical of them. The voracious feasting on opponents’ mistakes, as Amine Adli did to provide Victor Boniface with the opener.
The evidence that Xabi Alonso has drawn things from these players they never dared believe were there, as when midfield destroyer Robert Andrich tucked in an artful rabona. The false tension, when Augbsurg teenager Mert Kömür scored a goal worthy of the style of Alonso’s team to bring the deficit back to one, but we knew Leverkusen were never going to blow it.
Yet the moment that really captured Die Werkself’s imperious manner wasn’t a moment on the field. It came after, in the celebrations, when captain Lukas Hradecky ascended to the capo’s podium at the front of the Kurve, taking the Meisterschale with him. The Finland goalkeeper handed the trophy over to fans at the front of the throng so they, too, could raise the Bundesliga among their peers.
It was a beautiful gesture and a very trusting one. Hradecky didn’t guide it around and had no worries it would not come back in one piece. The trademark Alonso calm that has given them clarity in crucial moments was even endemic at party time.
Moments that would panic others have been ones this unified Leverkusen have taken in their stride; unfettered, unflustered, as if they’ve been winning with authority all their lives. That Leverkusen have won a first title is a remarkable achievement. That it could become a treble, with DFB-Pokal and Europa League finals to come, even more so. But that they could do it unbeaten (and not by frequently eking out draws – they dropped only 12 points) is something else.
It has rarely felt in doubt in recent weeks and the completion of the treble feels almost like an inevitability, just like the chimes of ATC’s All Around The World from the BayArena’s speakers that taunt away teams as the goals go in. Perhaps even to longstanding supporters who have endured a history of near-misses.
Learning to trust your underdogs who play like champions has been the theme of this Bundesliga campaign. Look at VfB Stuttgart, who share Leverkusen’s growth of having finished the league campaign with a barely believable 40 points more than the season before. If Alonso and his team are moving in different circles now, that is perhaps even more so for Sebastian Hoeness and his players.
Extracting themselves from relegation danger via the playoff last year, Stuttgart have not snuck a Champions League place. They have wrested itwith bold and brave, possession-heavy football and with a cavalcade of goals. Only Leverkusen and Bayern have scored more than Stuttgart’s 78 this season.
Yes, Bayern. Stuttgart’s 4-0 win over Borussia Mönchengladbach – a flexing of the bulging biceps that have been on display all season – secured second place ahead of the outgoing champions after their reverse in the final match of the Thomas Tuchel era. Bayern had looked like treating themselves to some comfort eating at Hoffenheim, donning the metaphorical tracksuit trousers and opening a family-sized bucket of ice-cream with two goals (by Mathijs Tel and Alphonso Davies) in the first six minutes.
Then the old failings that have dogged not just Tuchel resurfaced, Manuel Neuer helping present a goal to Maximilian Beier before Andrej Kramaric’s hat-trick gave the hosts a Conference League spot and leaving Bayern outside the top two for the first time since 2011.
Not that Bayern’s shortcomings should overshadow the achievements of Hoeness (another in the increasingly long line of coaches to decide the top job in Munich wasn’t for them) and his team. Their coach began the season attempting to stabilise a side that lost two of its best players, Wataru Endo and Konstantinos Mavrapanos, to the Premier League in the summer. He ended it, along with his sporting director Fabian Wohlgemuth, hopeful of persuading prolific forwards Serhou Guirassy and Deniz Undav to stay and take on the Champions League challenge in 2024-25.
Guirassy, whose 28 Bundesliga goals in a season is more than legends like club legends such as Jürgen Klinsmann, Mario Gómez, Fredi Bobic or Giovane Elber managed, deserves particular praise as does Hoeness, rounding Waldemar Anton and Chris Führich into players who are now in Germany’s Euro 2024 squad.
No talk of underdogs would be complete without Heidenheim, the top-flight debutants set to be the next beneficiaries of Leverkusen’s brilliance. Should Alonso and company complete the domestic double by beating Kaiserslautern in the Pokal final on Saturday, last season’s Bundesliga 2 champions and their long-serving coach, Frank Schmidt, will reach the Conference League courtesy of the eighth place secured with their 4-1 final-day victory over Köln.
Their historic season was well worth celebrating anyway, though it was typical of this modest club that they did it almost in the shadows, with Köln’s relegation hogging the headlines (“that first half,” lamented the latter’s forward Mark Uth after they went in at the break three down, “I don’t have the words for it”). The home side’s CEO, Holger Sanwald, felt he had to justify the celebrations in the face of their guests’ misery. “We considered whether we should do this [before],” he said, “even though Köln could be relegated. With all due respect to Effzeh, they had 33 other match days to collect points.”
That feeling of having left the cramming for the final exam to the last minute pervaded elsewhere, with Bochum facing the two-legged relegation playoff with Fortuna Düsseldorf after a 4-1 loss at Werder Bremen while Mainz made it look easy, powering to victory at Wolfsburg to eliminate any doubt. Bochum nearly got away with it as a jittery Union Berlin missed two penalties and conceded a late equaliser to Freiburg in Köpenick, but after the visiting goalkeeper, Noah Atubolu, saved Kevin Volland’s spot-kick in the second minute of stoppage time, Janik Haberer followed in to score and to put a suitably surreal cap on a long, long season for the capital club.
Wolfsburg 1-3 Mainz, Werder Bremen 4-1 Bochum, Stuttgart 4-0 Mönchengladbach, Hoffenheim 4-2 Bayern Munich, Eintracht Frankfurt 2-2 RB Leipzig, Dortmund 4-0 Darmstadt, Bayer Leverkusen 2-1 Augsburg, Union Berlin 2-1 Freiburg, Heidenheim 4-1 Köln
Bochum will hope not to be saying farewell to the Bundesliga like Marco Reus, who signed off in front of the Yellow Wall with a 160th Borussia Dortmund goal, a delicious free-kick, in victory over the bottom side, Darmstadt (local boy to the end, he left a drink behind the bar at Signal Iduna Park for any and all of the 80,000-plus present who wanted to take him up on it) before taking his leave to a guard of honour. One more dream remains for him to aim for, at Wembley.
The campaign was perhaps best summed up by Union’s Robin Gosens who, having finished last season almost scoring an equaliser in the Champions League final, finished this one weeping tears of relief on the field after avoiding relegation in his first Bundesliga season.
All hail the Bundesliga, free of the shackles of predictability. Although not for long, if Leverkusen have anything to do with it.
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bayer Leverkusen | 34 | 65 | 90 |
| 2 | Stuttgart | 34 | 39 | 73 |
| 3 | Bayern Munich | 34 | 49 | 72 |
| 4 | RB Leipzig | 34 | 38 | 65 |
| 5 | Borussia Dortmund | 34 | 25 | 63 |
| 6 | Eintracht Frankfurt | 34 | 1 | 47 |
| 7 | Hoffenheim | 34 | 0 | 46 |
| 8 | Heidenheim | 34 | -5 | 42 |
| 9 | Werder Bremen | 34 | -6 | 42 |
| 10 | Freiburg | 34 | -13 | 42 |
| 11 | Augsburg | 34 | -10 | 39 |
| 12 | Wolfsburg | 34 | -15 | 37 |
| 13 | Mainz | 34 | -12 | 35 |
| 14 | Borussia M'gladbach | 34 | -11 | 34 |
| 15 | Union Berlin | 34 | -25 | 33 |
| 16 | VfL Bochum | 34 | -32 | 33 |
| 17 | Cologne | 34 | -32 | 27 |
| 18 | Darmstadt | 34 | -56 | 17 |
