Coach Xabi Alonso celebrates by addressing the fans (Lars Baron/Getty Images)
With 5 matches to spare and after 11 consecutive years of victories for Bayern Munich, with great merits from coach Xabi Alonso
The Bayer Leverkusen football team won the Bundesliga, the German championship, thanks to a 5-0 victory against Werder Bremen: with five matchdays to go they have a 16-point lead over second-placed Bayern Munich, who from here to the end of the season he will be able to score a maximum of 15 points. For Bayer Leverkusen it is a historic result: despite being one of the oldest (it was founded in 1904) and most famous teams in Germany and Europe, in fact, this is only the first championship in its history. Furthermore, before this year the German championship had been won for eleven consecutive years by Bayern Munich, the strongest, richest and most successful team in the country.
Photo Bayer Leverkusen fans starting to enter the pitch at the end of the match (Andreas Rentz/Getty Images) Midfielder Granit Xhaka hugging a teammate (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)(AP Photo/Martin Meissner)(David Inderlied/dpa via AP)(AP Photo/Martin Meissner)The invasion of the pitch by Bayer Leverkusen fans (David Inderlied/dpa via AP)A banner celebrating coach Xabi Alonso (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)Two fans embrace each other in the middle of the field (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)
Leverkusen won the championship playing spectacular and modern football, largely thanks to their coach, the Spaniard Xabi Alonso, who at 42 years old is considered by experts and insiders to be one of the most promising coaches in Europe, if not the most promising of all. He arrived at Bayer Leverkusen in October 2022 after the season had already begun, after having only coached the youth teams of Real Madrid and the second team of Real Sociedad, both in Spain. That season they eventually finished sixth in the league and in the semi-finals of the Europa League, Europe’s second club cup, setting the stage for this year’s exceptional season.
Until a few weeks ago, many sports newspapers and experts took it for granted that Alonso would leave the club at the end of the season, given that he was in great demand by some of the best teams in Europe and the world, especially Liverpool, the English team for which he played. from 2004 to 2009. At the end of March it therefore arrived in a somewhat surprising way the announcement with which Alonso had said he would not leave the team at the end of the season.
Also due to Alonso’s work, Leverkusen’s best quality this year was probably their collective organisation. However, this way of playing has also highlighted some specific players: among these, one of the most appreciated has been Florian Wirtz, a very talented 20-year-old German attacking midfielder, author of 11 goals and 10 assists in the league so far. In the summer the team had not made large investments to buy new players, and had actually sold one of the best of last season, the Frenchman Moussa Diaby for 50 million to the English side Aston Villa. However, players with international experience have arrived, such as the Swiss midfielder Granit Xhaka, from Arsenal, and the left back Alex Grimaldo from Benfica, who has so far scored 9 goals and 13 assists in the league, a very high number for a defender.
Leverkusen is still in the running for all the other competitions: on May 25th they will play the final of the German League Cup against Kaiserslautern, a team from the second division, and last Thursday they won the first leg of the Europa quarter-finals 2-0 League against the English West Ham. The return match will be played next Thursday.
Before this season Leverkusen had finished second in the league several times, but probably only once did they clearly distinguish themselves as the best team in Germany and the failure to win was surprising: in 2001-2002, when the team came very close to achieving the so-called treble , that is, the victory of the three major competitions that a European club can aspire to in a season but incredibly lost everything in the last matches. From that year onwards, Leverkusen was often labeled as an unlucky and losing team.
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