Contents
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Page 1We were Vicecuses
Page 2What consequences does this championship have?
Sometime last winter these daydreams began. I imagined what it would be like, such a championship celebration. Would I be the type to storm the pitch after the final whistle? There is – no joke – a note in my cell phone from the spring: “Watch the Platzsturm videos. How to cut up the goal net?”
When Bayer Leverkusen actually became German champions on Sunday evening for the first time in the club’s 120 years of history, many things were as I had imagined. After thousands had already run onto the field, I also ran down the curve, hugged friends and strangers and actually used a lighter to cut a piece of net from the goal. We, Bayer Leverkusen, are now German champions. We of all people!
Until now, this had exceeded the imagination of many in football Germany and to a certain extent my own too. For many outsiders, Bayer Leverkusen is not just a boring appendage of a pharmaceutical company, but above all: Vizekusen, the eternal second. Neverkusen, the club that never makes it to the top because it fails when things get serious. The club won the DFB Cup and the UEFA Cup over 30 years ago, but was missing a championship. For decades, opposing corners have been telling us “You’ll never be German champions!” roared back, and until last Sunday they had every good reason to do so.
For the Leverkusen fan identity, the defeat is central, the disappointed expectations, the chronic insignificance. You were never a Leverkusen fan just despite, but always partly because of, the malice from the rest of the country. Many of our fan chants play on the lack of titles and the defeats from the distant past. We sing: “Never master, it hurts, it doesn’t matter, oh SVB!” or “We will be German champions next year”.
His fascination with Bayer Leverkusen began in a moment of defeat. On Sunday Jannis Carmesin celebrated a championship for the first time. © Private
This first championship will change the way we see ourselves. We know ourselves well in the moment of disappointed expectation, have experienced it countless times – and now suddenly have to ask ourselves: Who are we in triumph?
“Bayer Leverkusen will never win anything, never, never, never!”
My fascination with this club also began in a moment of defeat. I was eight years old, had just started to take an interest in football off the field, and liked a midfielder named Emerson, a delicate, bald Brazilian.
On an early summer evening in May 2000, I saw the… Sports show, as his team sank disappointedly on the pitch in the Munich suburb of Unterhaching. I saw the tears of the young Michael Ballack, who had initiated the decisive defeat with an own goal, and how the manager Reiner Calmund, who usually had something to say, locked himself in the dressing room because he wanted to be alone. It was the third runner-up title in four years. Emerson, my idol, then announced his move to Rome with the words: “Bayer Leverkusen will never win anything, never, never, never!”
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Two years later, Vizekusen went one better. After a furious season, Bayer once again lost the championship, losing the cup final against Schalke and the Champions League final against Real Madrid. After Zinédine Zidane’s dream goal, I cried for the first time because of a football match. Three times runner-up in one season, that was shockingly unique.
Bizarrely, through this near-death experience, I developed into a real fan in the following years. I expressed solidarity with the losers and became a strange child with an interest in the island in the middle of the Baden province. I started going to games in the stadium as often as I could, I moved to North Rhine-Westphalia to study and got an annual ticket.
Championship celebration on the lawn of the BayArena © Private
Sometime last winter these daydreams began. I imagined what it would be like, such a championship celebration. Would I be the type to storm the pitch after the final whistle? There is – no joke – a note in my cell phone from the spring: “Watch the Platzsturm videos. How to cut up the goal net?”
When Bayer Leverkusen actually became German champions on Sunday evening for the first time in the club’s 120 years of history, many things were as I had imagined. After thousands had already run onto the field, I also ran down the curve, hugged friends and strangers and actually used a lighter to cut a piece of net from the goal. We, Bayer Leverkusen, are now German champions. We of all people!
