They’ve done it again, the invincibles from the Rhine, who are increasingly becoming borderline crossers of madness. As if they had decided that normal football games no longer fit into this incredible season that is anything but normal. Like the week before in Dortmund, they scored an equalizer against VfB Stuttgart deep into stoppage time, which was celebrated as an important winning goal.
This time Robert Andrich scored the 2-2 in the sixth minute of injury time, saving Bayer 04’s chance of becoming the first club to remain unbeaten for a full season. “Last week the moment was very emotional, today I couldn’t believe we did it again,” said coach Xabi Alonso after his team scored a goal in stoppage time for the 16th time this season.
The mood in the stadium exploded, while the deeply disappointed Stuttgart coach Sebastian Hoeneß said: “At the moment, what came out at the end is not enough for me.” But actually everyone involved in this wonderful evening of football could feel like winners. As in Stuttgart during the first half of the season and in the DFB Cup, these two teams offered the audience one of the best games of the current Bundesliga season and can both live well with this division of points. Leverkusen are already champions and have extended their record streak of unbeaten competitive games to 46. And the Stuttgart team could consider themselves the winners of this matchday before kick-off because Borussia Dortmund had lost in Leipzig.
It was therefore clear that the Swabians’ comfortable lead in fifth place could no longer shrink on this matchday, regardless of the outcome of this game. However, when the ball is rolling in the duels between these teams, such considerations are irrelevant because then everyone is always giving full throttle. This was even true for Bayer 04, even though they were missing two central players, Granit Xhaka and Florian Wirtz, who were suspended.
An extremely attractive football game
Wirtz was only substituted in the 74th minute because he had received a “hit” in Dortmund the previous week, Alonso reported, and he “didn’t want to take any risks.” And yet it was an extremely attractive football game, “intense and at a high level, both physically and football-wise,” said Andrich.
Both teams had chances to score four or five goals, although VfB looked a bit more dangerous overall. Serhou Guirassy alone scored five times from the best position, but failed to score that evening, which is also why Hoeneß said: “My feeling is that we deserved to win today.”
Entertainment even without goals
Other details of the game were just as interesting as the penalty area scenes. Stuttgart left-back Maximilian Mittelstädt fought spectacular duels with Leverkusen winger Jeremie Frimpong. The fabulous Ezequiel Palacios in the Werkself midfield interpreted his role as Xhaka’s replacement with impressive determination; Again and again he broke away from VfB’s pressure with clever actions. And Stuttgart’s Denis Undav worked with maximum energy in the duels with Leverkusen’s back three.
Even without goals, the first half offered great entertainment before goals were scored. Less than two minutes had passed after the break when a long ball from Waldemar Anton landed at Jamie Leweling, who hit the post from a tight angle, whereupon Chris Führich had a second shot option and made it 0-1.
VfB now became more and more superior, and Undav scored the 0-2 (58th) after a duel against Andrich that was at the limit of legality. Now it became noticeable that not a single one of the trio of essentially irreplaceable players was on the pitch: Xhaka, Wirtz and Jonathan Tah, who had taken a hit and was substituted during the break. Many other teams in the world would probably have resigned themselves to this actually easy defeat, but Bayer Leverkusen is different.
They pushed the energy regulator up a few levels seemingly effortlessly, Amine Adli scored after a nice move to make it 1:2 (62nd), the stadium shook. Frimpong could hardly be held, and Stuttgart’s goalkeeper Alexander Nübel prevented the equalizer with two brilliant moves within a few seconds with shots from Adli and Jonas Hofmann (66th), which Andrich actually managed to do very late in the game. Typically Leverkusen.
