Simon Rolfes is not actually an artist, quite the opposite. The sports director took advanced courses in maths and physics as a high school student, studied sports management after his career and was also valued as a reliable organizer as a player, while others were responsible for the beauty of the game. It is still similar today, when Xabi Alonso is idolized as Bayer Leverkusen’s champion coach, Florian Wirtz is admired as a virtuoso dancer with the ball and Granit Xhaka is cheered as a conductor on the pitch.
All of these men are undoubtedly important for the success of the German champions, who can win another title in the Europa League final against Atalanta Bergamo on Wednesday evening (9 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the Europa League and on RTL). But the creative mind behind the composition of the Leverkusen team is Rolfes, who has not just brought together many good players with the right coach. It is now clear: With this squad, Rolfes has created a masterpiece that reveals new and more fascinating facets the longer it is looked at.
Just recently, in the Europa League semi-final against AS Roma, the team played 40 minutes of perhaps the most beautiful football that a Bundesliga team has seen for a long time, which is not surprising at first glance. After all, Bayer Leverkusen is by far the best team of the season. However, the Leverkusen player who embodies the grace of the game more than anyone else was not even on the pitch: Florian Wirtz. And yet everything flowed together into a harmonious unit.
A tailor-made system
When asked last week whether Bayer Leverkusen might even be the best team in Europe at the moment, striker Patrik Schick said: “Because we are not playing in the Champions League, it is difficult to judge it that way. But I would say that at the moment we are the team with the best form in Europe.” That was a good sentence because the word “form” not only has the classic meaning from the sports context, but also a term from the Art. Leverkusen have formed a squad in which strengths come to the fore and weaknesses are only visible upon very, very close inspection.
Triple in sight: Bayer still has a chance of two more titles.AFPGranit Xhaka is not one of the fastest players in the squad, but this never had a negative impact during the 51-game unbeaten streak. Jonathan Tah regularly made mistakes in the build-up play, but now he always has such good options for his passes that this problem is irrelevant and his confidence has grown ever greater. Jeremie Frimpong, whose overconfident attacking spirit was sometimes a burden for his defensive colleagues, is now being supported so skillfully that the old weakness has been eliminated. “Our system is tailor-made for him,” says Alonso about Frimpong, but this statement does not only apply to the Dutchman.
Alejandro Grimaldo plays on the left, who is actually first and foremost a very solid left-back. But his left foot can decide games and does so very regularly. Grimaldo is a weapon that all other Bundesliga clubs would also like to have, but hardly anyone at Benfica Lisbon had noticed this until last summer. A long essay could be written about all the small details that complement each other and reflect off each other like the elements of Raphael’s Vatican murals.
“Luck is not a coincidence”
There is a long process behind this over several seasons, Rolfes recently told “Spiegel”: “You can’t put together a successful squad in a single transfer window. In recent years, not only have the players developed individually, but also real friendships and the spirit in the team.” Bayern Munich’s supervisory board Uli Hoeneß claimed in an interview with the FAZ some time ago that the Leverkusen team also had “a bit of luck their transfers”, but Rolfes replied casually: “But luck is not a coincidence.”
The full fascination of squad building became apparent in the winter, when Victor Boniface was injured, when the previously established defenders Edmond Tapsoba and Odilon Kossonou were at the Africa Cup of Nations, when Jonas Hofmann lost his good form and Ezequiel Palacios was injured. The team did not get worse during this difficult phase, but rather better. Since then, there has been no senior team that is rested in the cup competitions, Alonso began to put together a new team every week. Piero Hincapie became an important factor, just like Josip Stanisic and Amine Adli, and Robert Andrich even sprinted from the Leverkusen substitutes’ bench to the status of a German international who is likely to be selected for the European Championships. “A squad is successful when there are lots of individual success stories,” says Rolfes, describing his concept for success. “The player must have the feeling: I give something, but I also get a lot back.” That seems simple, but in reality it is highly complex. Like so many other works of art that remain deeply etched in our memories.
