The most shocking thing was how easy it was. One would have expected Bayer Leverkusen’s successful quest to end Bayern Munich’s 11-year Bundesliga title streak to be titanic, full of the kind of drama and plot twists that defined Borussia Dortmund’s failed run the year before. But Leverkusen ended the streak and won their first-ever league title by simply being better than Bayern from start to finish.
They walloped Bayern in a key head-to-head in early February. By the time the season had ended, they had also clinched both the first-ever unbeaten Bundesliga campaign and a domestic double, winning the DFB Pokal with ease as well. Their only loss all season came in the UEFA Europa League final against a torrid Atalanta.
The run was a combination of years of smart spending, a perfect managerial hire (Xabi Alonso), and a perfect summer of 2023 transfers. Now, with the 2024-25 Bundesliga season beginning this week — all matches can be found on ESPN+, starting with Bayer Leverkusen at Borussia Monchengladbach on Friday afternoon (2:30 p.m. ET) — we’ll find out if Bayer Leverkusen can pull off the only thing harder than what they accomplished last season: doing it all again.
First of all, Leverkusen have kept the band together for another run. Alonso announced in the spring that despite interest from plenty of clubs, including Liverpool and Bayern Munich, he would be staying in Leverkusen for a run at a repeat.
The squad has a lot of continuity, too: among last year’s key contributors, only defender Josip Stanisic, who is a Bayern loanee, is gone. They could still lose defender Jonathan Tah to Bayern, depending on which transfer rumors you choose to believe, but at worst, of the 18 players who started at least 15 games in all competitions last season, 16 will still be wearing the Bayer kit again this season.
Continuity can be a beautiful thing, but it does create a new challenge. Alonso has spent the offseason preaching to his team about the dangers of complacency, and he certainly found extra fodder in a run of four frustrating friendlies. After a 2-1 win over third-division side RW Essen, Leverkusen drew 2-2 with Ligue 1 side Lens, lost 4-1 to Premier League side Arsenal (with former Leverkusen star Kai Havertz scoring a goal and getting two assists against his former club) and drew 1-1 with LaLiga side Real Betis.
Friendly results aren’t worth much — if they were, we’d be talking about Celtic as one of Europe’s best teams after wins over Manchester City (4-3) and Chelsea (4-1) — but they certainly frustrated Alonso, and either gave Leverkusen a sneak peek at a frustrating season ahead — or, more likely, allowed Alonso to do more work in firing up his charges.
“Expectations are very high,” sporting director Simon Rolfes told English-language media last week. “After time, [it becomes like] in the past everything was fantastic. We never made a mistake in a game, the passes were all fantastic. And even last season, that was not true. So to start new, to start from zero, to accept that we make mistakes, it’s part of the process of developing a team and team spirit. The team has to get this close relationship, and that’s challenging. It’s human after such a season.”
If there were concerns about motivation or mentality, though, they were probably assuaged on Saturday. Super Cup matches can often serve as afterthoughts or semi-friendlies, but in a physical and intense affair, Leverkusen overcame both a first-half red card and a late deficit to take down VfB Stuttgart on penalties after a 2-2 draw and win their first German Super Cup.
Gab Marcotti & Don Hutchison talk about Bayer Leverkusen’s win on penalties against Stuttgart in the Super Cup final.
Still, allowing 10 goals in five matches (four friendlies and the Super Cup) rings some alarm bells, as Leverkusen’s secret weapon last season was their brilliant ability to snuff out opponents’ direct attacks before they started. They were downright Manchester City-like in the way they controlled the tempo of a match. In the Bundesliga, they were the only team that combined proper, methodical buildup play with invulnerability to counterattacks.
Direct speed is a StatsPerform measure that tells us how quickly teams do or don’t push the ball up the pitch in a given sequence, and Leverkusen had both the second-lowest direct speed in the league in attack, and allowed the lowest direct speed in defense:
With their structure and disciplined buildup play, Leverkusen gave opponents almost no transition opportunities in a transition-heavy league, and also gave up few opportunities. They allowed just 24 goals — 15 fewer than anyone else — in Bundesliga play. Pulling that off required both extreme discipline during the buildup, and extreme intensity in counter-pressing. Any dropoff in either quality could be damaging.
The club did attempt to bolster the midfield this summer, bringing in Girona’s Aleix García. The 27-year-old was one of LaLiga’s best midfielders last season, finishing second in the league in progressive passes, total touches, pass completions and pass attempts. He was also sixth in total ball recoveries.
If you’re looking for someone who can both serve as a metronome in ball circulation and disrupt transition opportunities before they happen — such key personality traits for last year’s team — Garcia is who you attempt to acquire.
They added two other players this summer: veteran winger Martin Terrier and 19-year-old defender Jeanuël Belocian, both from Rennes.
“For sure, we tried to keep most of the players,” Rolfes said. “It should ideally be that the core structure is always there, and you change, year by year, a little bit of the squad, to refresh it. We signed a defender, a midfielder, and an attacking player. So in each part of the squad there’s a little bit of new competition, maybe a new hierarchy.” But in attempting to bolster quality and depth, they ran into a unique problem: The squad quality was already really high, and the budget is the budget.
“We have the number four budget in Germany,” Rolfes said, “and that didn’t change because of winning the title. The players are now performing at that high level, but we didn’t sign them on that high level — we signed them three or four years before as younger players with less quality. They developed into this. So now we try to add guys at this level, and it’s for sure more difficult.”
Moving forward, maintaining such a high level of quality will be equally difficult if Leverkusen’s youth academy doesn’t produce more standouts. On the current squad, only star attacking midfielder Florian Wirtz and backup goalkeeper Niklas Lomb began their path in the Leverkusen academy, and “to have more players from our academy would be fantastic,” he said.
“We are making big steps ahead in the academy, with a lot more [junior] national team players. I think five years ago, there were maybe only two [or] three, but now it’s almost 20.” Granted, it’s difficult figuring out how to give senior-team minutes to developing youngsters while fielding a top-flight, ambitious team, but having this problem is better than the alternative. “That’s still a big challenge for the next years, but that would be fantastic,” Rolfes said.
Terrier and Belocian each started in Saturday’s Super Cup along with Garcia, and while neither shined — Terrier was sent off just after 37 minutes following a clumsy high challenge — the fact that they were immediately dumped into the cauldron was a sign they’ll be counted on as Leverkusen embarks on both a title defense and what they hope is a lengthy Champions League campaign.
“It’s a new season, and everybody is at the same starting line again,” Rolfes said.
Mentalität. It’s the German word for “mentality,” as you could probably guess, and it was an inescapable descriptor for Leverkusen late in the 2023-24 season. The team wasn’t at its best in every minute of every match, but when it was time to turn a potential loss into a draw or a potential draw into a win, they were nearly perfect every time. Alonso is a former star midfielder who rarely looked out of sorts on the pitch or had a hair out of place, and for all the beautiful passing combinations his team can unleash, it’s easy to call these moments his greatest influence.
When a match enters crunch time, Leverkusen are always the more poised and relentless team.
“At a certain point [in] the season, we had the feeling that, okay, we will not lose,” Rolfes said. “That’s a special feeling. It was the mentality and the self-confidence of the players, that we will find a solution, we will get it however we have to. That makes it really special. And it didn’t stop after [clinching] the Bundesliga — we continued to score in the last minute.”
Last season, Leverkusen trailed in seven Bundesliga matches and turned those matches into two wins and five draws; they trailed in five UEFA Europa League matches, winning one of them with three draws. From the 80th minute on, with matches either tied or within one goal, they outscored opponents 21-2 in all competitions. In stoppage time, that margin was 12-0.
Patrik Schick was responsible for five of those 21 close-and-late goals; the former star turned into a savior sub last season, and he was the hero again on Saturday in the Super Cup. Alonso didn’t start his first-choice lineup — stars Wirtz, Alex Grimaldo, Jeremie Frimpong and Tah all began the match on the bench, while all three newcomers started — and once Terrier was sent off in the 37th minute, the field tilted pretty dramatically in Stuttgart’s favor. Stuttgart finished with 66% possession for the match, and star Deniz Undav came on in the second half and scored with his first touch in the 63rd minute.
Sure enough, the Leverkusen mentalität kicked in once more. Despite playing with 10 men, they dominated the ball down the stretch. Frimpong and Schick were each on the pitch for only 18 minutes, but finished with five of Leverkusen’s 12 total shots. Grimaldo came in for seven minutes and set up a gorgeous assist for Schick’s tying goal.
Although it was a Super Cup and didn’t count toward the league standings, both of these teams wanted this match badly. It would have been Stuttgart’s first Super Cup title since 1992, and their first top-flight trophy of any kind since 2007. Meanwhile, Leverkusen simply wants every match and every trophy. There were 29 fouls and 12 cards, including one for the typically reserved Alonso. It was cagey, fun, and one hell of a way to start the German season.
Still, even though they kept their domestic winning streak going on Saturday, Leverkusen are going to lose matches this year. They just are. They are the hunted team now, and even with maybe the strongest mentality in Europe, teams just don’t win all their close games year after year.
Over the past 10 seasons in Europe’s Big Five leagues, 15 teams have averaged at least 2.1 points per game in games decided by 0-1 goals. Three of them played last season; none of the other 12 matched their close-game average the next season. They had to improve on the pitch to match their standing in the table.
If there’s good news, it’s that of the eight teams in this batch who won their league title that season, four did it again the next year. But the road is going to be tougher.
The scale of the task ahead for Leverkusen becomes even more daunting when you look at what the Bundesliga’s other brightest lights are bringing to the table.
Bayern, the betting favorite to resume their place atop the league, added Crystal Palace winger Michael Olise, defensive midfielder João Palhinha and Stuttgart defender Hiroki Ito to a team that already boasted the best xG differential in the league last season. Their choice of new manager — former Manchester City captain and Burnley manager Vincent Kompany — was an odd one considering Burnley got relegated last season, but for the possession-heavy style he wants to establish, he’ll find his current roster far more capable than the one he had in northern England.
RB Leipzig, meanwhile, might have been the second-best team in the league down the stretch last season despite having lost their three best young players (forward Christopher Nkunku, midfielder Dominik Szoboszlai and defender Josko Gvardiol) to big-money Premier League transfers in the same summer. This time around, their only primary loss is injury-prone attacking midfielder Dani Olmo, who left for Barcelona. Their continuity is much stronger, and in addition to forwards Loïs Openda and Benjamin Sesko, they beat out Bayern to bring back PSG’s Xavi Simons for a second season on loan.
Borussia Dortmund have done an interesting job of refreshing last year’s confusing squad, one that couldn’t overcome a dire autumn funk and finished fifth in the league but also charged to the UEFA Champions League final. Veterans Mats Hummels, Marco Reus and Niclas Füllkrug are all gone, as are key loanees Jadon Sancho and Ian Maatsen, but they brought in both sturdy veterans — Stuttgart forward Serhou Guirassy, Brighton & Hove Albion midfielder Pascal Groß, Stuttgart defender Waldemar Anton — and high-upside younger players like Hoffenheim forward Maximilian Beier (16 goals last season) and Manchester City fullback loanee Yan Couto.
Second-place Stuttgart looked worse for wear after losing Guirassy, Anton and Ito to bigger German clubs, but they did manage to acquire Undav — another star — on a permanent deal and replaced Guirassy with Augsburg’s Ermedin Demirovic (15 goals and nine assists last season). We’ll see if they have the depth they need in defense, but manager Sebastian Hoeness has yet to make a wrong move in Baden-Wurttemberg.
The challenges are only beginning, but Bayer Leverkusen still have Wirtz (18 goals and 19 assists in all competitions), forward Victor Boniface (21 goals and nine assists, plus the opening goal in Saturday’s Super Cup), Grimaldo (12 goals and 17 assists), Frimpong (14 goals and 10 assists), veteran Granit Xhaka and so many other battle-hardened pieces from last year’s run.
They also still have Alonso, though Rolfes always thought he would stay for another season. “In conversations with him, I always had a good feeling,” he said. “The conversations were open, transparent, [trusting]. I always had a good feeling that he was staying. I think he appreciates the club culture, the way we work here, the way we work together.”
And if or when Alonso does depart for Real Madrid or some other major club, his impact will remain. “Each successful story is helpful for the next one,” Rolfes noted. “That’s also with the players. Kai Havertz, for example, his career path helped to sign Florian Wirtz. So Wirtz will help maybe for the next one. Frimpong, [Piero] Hincapié, all the guys, with successful stories it will help to sign the next story, the next successful coach … in 10 years,” he laughed.
Saturday was a reminder that everyone’s gunning for Bayer Leverkusen. The story begins anew.
“It’s a new start,” Rolfes said. “One thing is done. Perfect. But let’s go for new things. We have a lot of quality in the club and in the club culture, scouting, coaching staff … a lot of really good people working here. That motivates me a lot, and I can feel that it’s motivating for others — we will try to work and move forward and get the next chance.”