They chased each other with giant beer glasses.
Victor Boniface and Edmond Tapsoba were stalking their teammates, looking for someone to dunk. Bayer Leverkusen were finally Bundesliga champions and in the heart of the BayArena, there was chaos.
Jérémie Frimpong took refuge in a live television broadcast. The celebrations spread from private to public, to ongoing interviews and, ultimately, to news stories. Reporters leaned over the gates of the interview area, clawing at anyone who moved. We asked for photos. Another held up a replica of the Bundesliga trophy and asked for signatures. Xabi Alonso signed it. In doing so, a horde of journalists clung to the barriers, attacking the most coveted coach in world football.
Meanwhile, Fernando Carro, the club’s general manager, drifted calmly, bottle in hand, looking on like a proud uncle. Accomplished job.
Nathan Tella floated through, looking as content and feeling as much peace as a professional athlete could. A year previously, Tella was playing in the second tier of English football, winning promotion to the Premier League and the title with Burnley. Now he was not only champion of one of Europe’s five major leagues, but an integral part of one of its most powerful teams and was linked to Leverkusen’s performances that would be remembered for decades.
“It’s been surreal,” said former Arsenal youngster Tella. Athleticism. “From promotion to the opportunity to come to the Bundesliga and now maybe win a double or even a treble. I wouldn’t have believed it if you told me. I just want to thank everyone who have helped in my journey, but it’s not the end.
But why did it work so well? This Leverkusen team will be remembered for the number of players who contributed at precisely the right time. During injuries or suspensions; whenever the need arose, someone from the team answered the call.
How’s it going ?
“It’s the manager (Alonso),” Tella said. “It focuses on minor details and how they turn out to be massive details.”
Tella was shuffling along the line and was in the middle of another interview when a group of his teammates, led by Jonathan Tah, took him away.
“He has to leave now…”
They left laughing, having recruited him into a group that would invade Alonso’s live press conference, douse him with another beer – the third of the evening – and leave their head coach dripping from head to toe , live on television.
Bayer Leverkusen players spray Xabi Alonso with beer – the usual way to celebrate a Bundesliga title win 🍺
📼 @bayer04_fr pic.twitter.com/FAl4h7lTF4
— Athletics | Football (@TheAthleticFC) April 14, 2024
What a day. What a night.
At first it was just a few fans, some beer and a few songs.
Then there were dozens, then hundreds, and before long thousands, along the road leading to the BayArena, waiting for the players who would end a wait as long as the history of their club.
Red smoke was billowing from the flares. Scarves hung from the lampposts. Fans climbed trees and bus stops. Young children were on the shoulders, their heads in the clouds of cordite.
When the Leverkusen team coach arrived, the match moved slowly into this furnace, towards the conclusion of one of the most powerful league seasons in recent memory.
Lost in that haze were shirts bearing the names of today’s icons: Wirtz, Xhaka, Tah and almost every other member of Alonso’s team. But between them there were Ballack and Kirsten, Kiessling and Voller; players who remain eternally popular, who have achieved great things for Leverkusen but without ever really becoming champions. They were also there for this day.
Some of these players are also stenciled outside the BayArena. Look hard and you can also find a small collage of Leverkusen’s victory over Manchester United in the 2001-02 Champions League semi-final. It is nestled between the pipes and the steel, on one of the exterior walls.
Everyone remembers Zinedine Zidane’s volley for Real Madrid against Leverkusen at Hampden Park in Glasgow in that year’s final. But here, where they have lived among their yesterdays for so long, these two United games constitute a powerful 3-3 away goal victory. Somehow, unfairly, they would be part of a trio of misfortunes that gave rise to the legend of the “Neverkusen.”
And it’s this kind of past that creates neuroses: the fear that makes fans believe that a match is never over, not even three to zero with a minute to play, the kind of experience that convinces them that football really only exists as a way to play. so that others make fun of them.
Not Sunday. The path from Leverkusen Station to the BayArena stretches for about 1.6 km along a river. Vendors were selling “Deutscher Meister” (German champion) 2024 T-shirts every few hundred meters and fans were buying them by the handful. A supplier Athleticism spoke said he had sold more than a hundred by 2 p.m., just hours before the game.
It might have been a tough sell, but it was clear that no one was afraid to flirt with destiny. Across the river, on waterside rocks, fans drank from cans in the sun and blasted generic rock from a beat-up stereo.
That’s how good Alonso’s team has been. No one in Germany had an answer for Leverkusen this year. Not even Bayern Munich, champion 11 in a row, not even when complemented by Harry Kane. Leverkusen have been extremely excellent in all competitions and there was no sense at any point on Sunday that anyone believed visitors Werder Bremen would not simply be brushed aside.
But not winning the match would still have been humiliating. The 2023-24 Bundesliga has been a foregone conclusion for some time, but with the preparation and the influx of journalists, T-shirts and stencils were sprayed on sidewalks all over the city, announcing the arrival of our dream (our dream), anything but a Leverkusen victory yesterday would have been another opportunity for people to point and laugh.
So there was pressure. It just never showed up.
The bus moved slowly through the crowd. Firecrackers burst around, rockets exploded above and fans began to follow in his wake. When they arrived at the stadium, Alonso and his players were greeted by a sign hanging at one of the entrances.
“The wait is over, you’re going to legend!” (“The wait is over, become legends!”).
That’s exactly what they did.
The match started with Tah walking between his teammates, hugging each of them, and ended at the shining feet of Florian Wirtz. Wirtz’s first goal was exhilaratingly violent. His second brought the fans through the backboards and onto the field. His third completed his hat-trick and convinced the referee that at 5-0 and with Bremen desperate to be elsewhere, it was better to blow the whistle at full time.
The crowd tried three times to invade the field. The first two were rebuffed and constrained by the disapproval of the hissing majority and the silent grip of the social contract. The third erupted, engulfing the players whole and surrounding them in columns of blazing smoke that rose into the night sky.
Somehow they made their way off the field and into the tunnel.
In the interview area that followed, amidst the great curse, there was sincerity; a glimpse into the soul of football.
The players didn’t talk about the “next” game or the need to not get carried away. Instead, they talked about gratitude and what those moments meant. The game doesn’t always show this humanity. The more he grows, the less he reveals himself. But in those unguarded seconds after success, when no one can discuss methods or mindsets, or quibble over word choice, the walls come down, just for a moment.
Granit Xhaka was sitting on the ground, surrounded by his children. Patrik Schick carried his son. There were mothers on the sidelines, proudly watching their boys speak eloquently to the media, achieving big career milestones with dignity and class. There were fathers, brothers and sisters with their family names on their replica shirts. Some wore them backwards, with the name on the chest. Cousins and friends grabbed pizzas from the locker room. A grandmother was drowning in a replica shirt that was too big. A grandfather didn’t really know where to go or what to do. He was disconcerted to find himself at the center of the German football universe but seemed happy enough to be there.
It was tender and real. A privilege to watch.
The analysis of Leverkusen’s season describes the cohesion of the club and the many people who contributed to this success. They were there too. Not just the data scientists, recruiters, and coaches, but also the people whose names no one knew — the ones who spent the season taking pictures, preparing reports, shuffling spreadsheets, and rearranging supplies Office. Erasers and pencils, training bibs and cones. They came and went, with smiles, beers and hugs for everyone who wanted one.
And then everyone went out. Back to the crowd on the pitch, who had made noise through the walls, before emerging onto a balcony at the back of the pitch.
There, like emperors returning from a conquest, Bayer Leverkusen stood before its people to show them what was now theirs.
(Top photo: Lars Baron/Getty Images)