Xabi Alonso knew exactly what he was talking about. Even the all-winner knows from his playing days the unpleasant feeling of losing a European Cup final. In May 2007, the Spaniard was in the Liverpool team that lost to AC Milan in the Champions League final in Athens. That didn’t feel good at all, but the pain was lessened because Liverpool and Alonso had already won the premier class against the Italians in an epic final two years earlier.
Nevertheless, Alonso, who no longer plays for Liverpool, Real Madrid or Bayern Munich on the pitch but is now active off the pitch as coach of Bayer Leverkusen, said from bad experience: “Defeats in finals are not easy to forget.” His team had played 51 games this season and not a single opponent had managed to beat Leverkusen. They succeeded on the 52nd attempt. Bayer met their match in Atalanta Bergamo in the Europa League final in Dublin on Wednesday.
The German champions lost 3-0 to the fifth-placed team in the Italian league. Ademola Lookman, who once had little success under contract in Leipzig, scored all of the goals (12th, 26th and 75th minutes). The pain was written all over the Leverkusen players’ faces late in the evening in the Irish capital. “Today was just a shitty day,” said national player Robert Andrich. Jonathan Tah added on RTL: “Even if it hurts, I think we have to accept the pain.”
Bayer Leverkusen without centre forward
It became apparent early on that this game would go in the wrong direction for Leverkusen. They were repeatedly troubled by the aggressive Italians, whose special style of play with one-on-one duels all over the pitch was well known, but which Bayer had very little to counter. Their own passes failed far too often, not only on the offensive, but also in their own half, which Bergamo, in the person of Lookman, took advantage of.
“Unfortunately our plan didn’t work,” said Alonso, who of course knew what would happen to his people in Dublin, but chose the wrong antidote. If Leverkusen did manage to escape Atalanta’s high pressing, they lost the ball later because the Germans acted too imprecisely or the Italians cleared the ball with tireless effort. Alonso started without a physically robust center forward. Maybe it would have been needed in this game.
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The coach brought on Victor Boniface for the second half, and later Patrik Schick. Things only got a little better, especially since Bergamo, unlike other opponents so far, added a third goal just as Leverkusen had come back from behind so often this season. The 0-3 score around 15 minutes before the end of the game signaled even the escape artists that they were trapped. That meant the first defeat since May 2023. “It won’t be an easy night for us,” Alonso predicted.
Lookman shoots BayerThe pictures from Leverkusen’s bitter Europa League evening
But this Thursday, the focus must be on Berlin. The next final for Leverkusen will take place in the German capital on Saturday (8 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the DFB Cup, on ARD and on Sky). Bayer is the clear favorite against second division club 1. FC Kaiserslautern, despite the 0:3 defeat in Dublin. “We have to keep going, we still have a very important game ahead of us. We can’t let ourselves be talked down too much,” said Tah. Instead of the triple, it should now be the double.
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Anyone who listened to the Leverkusen players on Wednesday evening, however, realised that it will not only be about physical recovery in the time leading up to kick-off in Berlin, but also psychological recovery. “It hurts a lot. We are all extremely disappointed and had imagined something different,” said captain Tah. Andrich, who only came on as a substitute, sounded similar: “At the moment, the disappointment is much greater than the anticipation of Berlin. It is extremely bitter today. We had imagined more.”
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Granit is a little more gnawing than this missed chance to win the European Cup. The goalkeeper and first captain Lukas Hradecky, who was not used, also said: “I would have liked to have suffered the first defeat in a meaningless game.”
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Now comes one last meaningful game. Then Bayer would like to do better again. You could tell that the idea of Dublin was also gnawing at Xabi Alonso. “We weren’t at our best level, including me,” said the coach. “We have to accept that Atalanta was better. And we have to learn from it.” His team played “perhaps too many short passes,” “we had some problems. We didn’t want to change our style.” His simple conclusion: “It didn’t work.”
Another trophy is at stake in Berlin and the way in which this unique season of the Leverkusen high-flyers, who are now on the verge of a tough time, will be remembered. “The team has played an excellent season,” said sporting director Simon Rolfes defiantly. “And we will show that in Berlin.” Another defeat in the final, especially against the big outsider Kaiserslautern, would be a major dent in the record that was flawless up until Wednesday – and cannot be dealt with in two days.
