Et was not long ago that Simon Rolfes sounded quite enthusiastic about the state of the Leverkusen Bundesliga team, which is suddenly quite disillusioned after a cup round and two Bundesliga games. The sporting director of the Rhinelander put together an exquisite ensemble of fast dribblers, determined workers, noble technicians and difference players, who can enchant aesthetes on a good day and also played very consistently in the spring.
After the first qualification for the Champions League since 2019, the team is able to “just collect the points” even on the less good days, Rolfes assumed. “The team understood that. I think that was an important development step.” The sports director formulated these thoughts shortly before the three competitive defeats at the start of the season in an interview with the club magazine, whereupon the team immediately made it unmistakably clear that they lacked exactly the pragmatism Rolfes mentioned.
No fundamental problem
The season is still so young that at least the slip-ups in the Bundesliga can be easily repaired. But such a week as the bottom of the table, who was also eliminated from the DFB Cup as a Champions League participant in a third division club, is depressing. Especially in moments like this, football coaches are always psychologists who try to reach heads.
So the Leverkusen head coach Gerardo Seoane said on the day before the important game against TSG Hoffenheim on Saturday (3.30 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the Bundesliga and on Sky): “This is above all a challenge that we want to accept. We want to assert ourselves against this resistance.” So far, nobody seems to see a fundamental problem behind the series of defeats. In order to clear his mind, the coach has used different forms of communication over the past few days.
Patrik Schick is desperate.
:
Bild: Sportphoto by Laci Perenyi
Some of his speeches were “specific,” he said, while other messages were “in a different tone, to help the players.” The factory club experiences days when the highest level of coaching is required, because the situation is not only a test for the team, but also for Seoane himself. The 43-year-old Swiss still hopes that the worst start to the season in Leverkusen’s Bundesliga history can simply be explained by this soccer-specific phenomenon called “luck”.
Coaches often say that results cannot be planned, but performances can, and Seoane was not dissatisfied with the level of football in his team either in Dortmund (0-1) or against Augsburg (1-2). “If you look at the pure performances without the results, there’s no reason to panic, not at all,” he said this week.
Leverkusen comfort zone
At the same time, however, he concedes: “That’s only half the truth.” It is also true that the performance in the first round game in the DFB Cup was shockingly bad before the best chances were wasted in front of the opposing goals despite an increase in performance in the Bundesliga and critical mistakes were made in defense. These findings also belong to the performance and in a way also to this somewhat enigmatic football club.
Many viewers find it uncomfortable to regularly dig up this old story about the comfort zone in Leverkusen, which is good to live in, but where the energy level sometimes drops a few percent. This phenomenon has been used to explain the surprising phases of failure of this club several times, sometimes by those responsible themselves.
The Leverkusen comfort zone? Two defeats at the start of the Bundesliga weigh on spirits.
:
Image: dpa
In these August weeks, this mechanism once again fits perfectly as an explanation for the small Bayer crisis: Everything was so wonderful over the summer. The joy of returning to the Champions League was mixed with the pride of not losing any important players and of having extended the contracts with Patrik Schick and Florian Wirtz. Seoane shared how nice it is to go into a second year with a team, so you can work more and more on the details rather than the basics.
Because almost everything came together as desired and a well-rehearsed team got through the summer with almost no injuries, unusually offensive claims were even formulated: Qualification for the Champions League is now the minimum goal, and internationally they want to be “one of the top 16 on a permanent basis ‘ said managing director Fernando Carro, who would like to eventually win a title.
“Good Spirit”
The attempt to implant seriousness, self-confidence and a piece of the dreaded Bavarian “Mir san mir” in the Werkself through such messages initially went wrong. Nobody seems to really understand how this could have happened in this situation. It is conceivable that the hardly changed squad lacks fresh impetus, the positive forces of renewal have often been underestimated.
As a measure against the crisis, work was carried out very conscientiously and seriously, Seoane said. “The team behaves the way I imagine it to. She really lived through the disappointment, dealt with it and also talked about it.” Meanwhile, the trainer himself tries to “set certain stimuli in terms of emotion and mentality”, he feels “a good spirit”.
However, the danger of having to fight for weeks to catch up after the start of the season remains acute. Especially since two players who are particularly important for factors that are difficult to control such as “emotion” and “mentality” are missing against Hoffenheim: goalkeeper Lukas Hradecky, who was suspended, and injured Robert Andrich.
