If you don’t know already, Bayer Leverkusen created history by going 51 games unbeaten across all competitions to win the Bundesliga, Germany’s top football league! No other team in Europe has ever gone on such a long unbeaten streak before!
Coached by former Real Madrid and Liverpool star, Xabi Alonso, Bayer Leverkusen created history to become the first team ever to complete an entire Bundesliga season without defeat. Bayer Leverkusen finished the season with a remarkable record of 28 wins, 6 draws and zero losses! In doing so, they have now become Germany’s ‘Invincibles’ as the first team ever to go undefeated in a Bundesliga season. Incredibly, they failed to score in a league match only once during the season.
Creating History
To put the team’s achievement into context, this is the first time in the club’s 120-year history that they are winning any major trophy. That is an incredibly long time! Long derided as ‘Neverkusen’ for their failure to win the Bundesliga earlier, the club previously bagged 2nd place on five occasions. Prior to this year, Leverkusen’s most successful season was a hat-trick of second place finishes in the 2001-02 season when they were runners-up in the Bundesliga, runners-up the German Cup final and, most painfully, runners-up in the UEFA Champions League final to Real Madrid!
Astounding Rise to the Top
With their recent success, it is easy to forget that Leverkusen were second-last on the table when Xabi Alonso was brought in as the team manager in October 2022. They had lost 7 out of their first 8 games and were enduring their worst start to a Bundesliga campaign since 1979.
In their desperation, Leverkusen turned to Alonso whose only previous managerial job had been working with Real Sociedad’s B team in the Spanish third division. As luck would have it, the club unearthed a managerial gem. His tactical knowledge combined with his focus on playing good, aggressive possession-based football gradually turned their fortunes around. Despite their horrid start, Alonso guided the team to a creditable sixth-placed finish in the 2022-23 season.
Achieving So Much with So Little
While Bayer Leverkusen are being showered with well-deserved adulation today, it’s important to remember that they were very much in the doldrums barely just a season ago. And they’ve achieved beyond anybody’s wildest imagination at a fraction of the budget of mid-table Premier League clubs.
Many in Leverkusen’s title-winning squad are “rejects” from other clubs – Granit Xhaka, Leverkusen’s “marquee” signing, was bought from Arsenal for a relatively cheap 25 million euros, Victor Boniface and Nathan Tella were mostly unknown, Josip Stanisic was loaned from mighty Bayern Munich, and Alex Grimaldo and Jonas Hoffman arrived on free transfers after their previous contracts ended at Benfica and Borussia Monchengladbach respectively. None of these are household names like Vinicius Jr, Mbappe or Haaland.
Yet, Leverkusen’s amazing progress demonstrates how good coaching combined with willing learners, hard workers, consistency, discipline and belief can make even seemingly “average” players achieve the extraordinary. Through Leverkusen’s success, we learn that each one of us can reach great heights no matter what our current situation may be.
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P.S. Many times we project our own view of the world along with our biases onto people we meet. But not everyone is how they seem to us. This video is a lovely reminder of that. Two of life’s simple lessons: 1) Never judge a book by its cover & 2) Look within before looking out. Enjoy watching with the family 🙂