A top game that was unthinkable months ago: league leaders Leverkusen travel to third-placed Stuttgart. It will be a game between two teams who like possession of the ball and yet play differently.
When Granit Thick snowflakes fell in front of the window. That was on Sunday (December 3rd, 2023). Xhaka was now standing inside; he was actually dressed too warmly for that. It didn’t seem to bother him. He was preoccupied with his team Bayer Leverkusen’s game, which had recently ended. He said: “We can be proud of ourselves that a team like BVB comes here and puts up a brutal fight.”
It was actually a strange game in which Borussia Dortmund took the lead early on and then largely stopped playing football. In the statistics it looked like this: Leverkusen had almost 70 percent ball possession, 23 shots and 16 corners, but the game ended draw.
Leverkusen against Stuttgart – top game on Sunday
On Sunday (from 3:20 p.m. live in the radio report and in the live ticker on the Sportschau) there is another important game for Bayer Leverkusen. It’s not just the playmaker Xhaka who will have to adapt. This time the opponent is not BVB, who recently played against Leverkusen like an outsider in the first round of the DFB Cup.
Bayer will then face VfB Stuttgart. It is the top game of the 14th matchday in the Bundesliga. And that’s quite a surprise.
| Table position | Association | games | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
1 | Bayer Leverkusen | 13 | 35 |
2 | Bayern Munich | 12 | 32 |
3 | VfB Stuttgart | 13 | 30 |
4 | RB Leipzig | 13 | 26 |
5 | Borussia Dortmund | 13 | 25 |
VfB coach Hoeneß: “We dare to really annoy them”
What is surprising, of course, is how confidently Leverkusen is playing this season. That they haven’t lost a competitive game there at all. The record in the Bundesliga is also impressive: the team won eleven of 13 games and two ended in a draw. Leverkusen got 35 of a possible 39 points.
But what is currently happening in Stuttgart is even more surprising. Last season, VfB almost got relegated, only saving themselves in relegation. The coach there is Sebastian Hoeneß. In just a few months, he has turned a team that was almost relegated into a team that plays good football and is successful.
Tobi Schäfer, Sportschau Bundesliga Update, December 7th, 2023 2:12 p.m
Stuttgart is surprisingly third in the Bundesliga, and the club has just thrown out BVB in the DFB Cup. They then felt ready for the game against Leverkusen, says coach Hoeneß: “We’re confident enough to really annoy them.”
At VfB they choose the route via the wings
The fact that Leverkusen and Stuttgart meet in a top game at this point in the season is also due to the work of their coaches. Stuttgart’s trainer Hoeneß and Leverkusen Xabi Alonso is united by a preference for possession football and intensive pressing; they don’t like anything destructive. “It’s a very good opponent who played very good, beautiful football”said Alonso. “I like this football, the coach’s idea.”
And yet the football of both teams differs, and not just in the tactical formation. It’s all about the subtleties. This can be seen above all in the attacking play of both teams. Stuttgart likes to play on the wings, but overall more variable, sometimes waiting and sometimes with a lot of pressure and even more speed. Hoeneß chose the second option for the cup game against Dortmund and he won’t have regretted it.
Leverkusen’s goal: through the center to the wings and back
Football in Leverkusen may have even more recognition value, that’s the work of coach Alonso. His team likes to build through the center. Granit Xhaka and Exequiel Palacios are playmakers from deep in the defensive midfield. Almost every attack begins with them. Both position themselves in front of each other when they have the ball, and the offensive players Florian Wirtz and Jonas Hofmann often fall to their side. This is how Leverkusen creates superior numbers in the center. This is not a good sign for the opponent.
What follows is relatively easy to describe, but difficult to defend: If the opposing team also moves into the center to defend there, space opens up on at least one side. Leverkusen uses this to shift with diagonal balls.
The wing then moves towards the baseline, especially via the fast Jeremie Frimpong on the right side. And from there back into the middle: a flat back pass or a high cross, both have already been seen at Bayer. They have a few potential buyers: Of course Victor Boniface, the center forward (eight goals this season). But also Wirtz, Hofmann, Palacios and Xhaka. It is not uncommon for five Leverkusen players to position themselves in and around the opponent’s penalty area in such moments.
Hoeneß, Stuttgart and the “giant goal”
Of course they also observed this in Stuttgart. Coach Hoeneß apparently has a plan. The goal must be to put Leverkusen in situations “which you may not have experienced very often”he says. “That they don’t have control over the game themselves.”
That would indicate that he is fielding his team courageously even against the league leaders. That in attack he is again relying on a duo of Serhou Guirassy (16 goals in eleven games) and Deniz Undav (eight goals in ten games). Both have the form and the individual class to annoy Leverkusen’s defense (only eleven goals conceded). And they harmonize with each other. “We have a world-class relationship”Undav once told “Kicker”.
The wish at VfB is now that Undav and Guirassy will also work together against Leverkusen. That they might even be able to create a premiere in Stuttgart. “Now, of course, we have a huge goal“, says Hoeneß. They would like to be the first team to win a game against Leverkusen this season.