Nobody at Bayer Leverkusen talks about the championship, maybe that’s smart. Leverkusen are still leaders. They can only dream of it with their opponent RB Leipzig (Saturday from 6:20 p.m. live in the radio report and in the ticker at the Sportschau).
Lukas Hradecky didn’t like to say the unspeakable, but in this moment of euphoria there was no room for silence either. So he searched for words. He said: “If we take it seriously, then, yeah, I don’t know.” Hradecky had to laugh at his answer, which was not an answer. Then he preferred to remain silent.
Hradecky, 34, has been the goalkeeper for Bayer Leverkusen for five and a half years, a club that has often been at the top but has never won the championship. This is a tradition. Leverkusen is therefore called “Vizekusen”. But right now it seems as if the club is going through a transformation. “Vizekusen” could become “Meisterkusen”.
Leverkusen is at the forefront – ahead of Bayern
In the Bundesliga, 17 of 34 match days have been completed and the first half of the season is over. This time the league leaders are not from Munich, nor are they from Dortmund or Leipzig. Bayer Leverkusen is actually at the top: 45 points, four more than Bayern, but they have played one game less.
They still don’t like to talk about the championship in Leverkusen, and goalkeeper Hradecky is no exception. National player Jonas Hofmann, 31, admitted that he likes the look at the table. “I still have heart palpitations”said Hofmann after the last-minute win against Augsburg and also meant the lead over Bayern. “That’s just awesome.”
Leipzig often ended up ahead of Leverkusen
On Saturday evening, league leaders Leverkusen will play fourth-placed RB Leipzig in the top game of the 18th matchday. This isn’t a surprise, what’s surprising is how the roles are distributed before the game.
Leipzig has been playing in the Bundesliga since the 2016/17 season, and since then RB has been ahead of Leverkusen in the table after the last matchday in five of seven seasons. Most recently, sixteen points separated Marco Rose’s Leipzig team from Xabi Alonso’s Leverkusen team at the end of the season. Now, halfway through the season, they are once again separated by twelve points, only this time Leverkusen is well ahead of Leipzig (33 points, fourth place).
There are explanations for this development. Some are quite obvious, in Leipzig they sometimes referred to important players who left the club before the season: Josko Gvardiol (Manchester City), Dominik Szoboszlai (Liverpool FC), Christopher Nkunku (Chelsea FC) or Konrad Laimer (Bayern Munich). ). Or regular players who were missing for many weeks or even months because they were injured. Like Dani Olmo or Captain Willi Orban.
When Leipzig coach Rose talked about the subtle differences
Most recently, when Leipzig lost to Eintracht Frankfurt in the Bundesliga, coach Rose did not talk about injured footballers or those who no longer play for RB. He talked about the subtle differences. Statisticians recorded 26 shots on goal for his team against Frankfurt, but no goal. “We’re going to shoot ourselves wolf, have endless great chances and not score a goal”said Rose. “That’s perhaps what we’re missing at the top.”
It was actually this one goal that really set Leipzig apart from those at the top, Leverkusen, on this matchday. Bayer Leverkusen shot at goal 25 times in Augsburg and scored one goal, which came in the fourth minute of stoppage time. The hero of the afternoon was Exequiel Palacios.
“That’s the best thing in football when you try, try, try and then score at the last moment. It’s a euphoric moment for everyone on the bench, for the fans and also for the players.”said the coach Xabi Alonso. The late decision had nothing to do with luck. “This is a reward for a good game.”
When the Bundesliga becomes a marathon
Alonso, 42, has not been the coach at Leverkusen for that long; he came in autumn 2022. The club was second to last in the table then. He initially stabilized the defense and accepted that the offensive game suffered as a result. Then he went on the offensive. Today Leverkusen is a ball possession team that can also work defensively. Someone who plays beautiful football and is successful. Who also wins close games like against Augsburg.
After the game, Leverkusen’s Hofmann did talk about the title, but he packaged this story in a comparison. He didn’t mention the word championship. In Leverkusen they are loudly silent. Hofmann compared the season to a marathon. He saw that they had run half of the route at Bayer Leverkusen. He said: “Everyone who runs a marathon wants to reach the finish line at the end. We do everything we can to achieve that.”