JNow that Bayer Leverkusen's big games are approaching, on Tuesday in the DFB Cup against VfB Stuttgart (8.45 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the DFB Cup, on ARD and on Sky) or next Saturday against Bayern Munich (6.30 p.m in the FAZ live ticker for the Bundesliga and on Sky) and then from March in the knockout phase of the Europa League, there will finally be reliable answers. One of the big questions of this football season is: How good is the still undefeated league leader in the Bundesliga really?
The game of coach Xabi Alonso's team looks and apparently feels impressive. Mönchengladbach's Christoph Kramer was not the first professional to remark after a meeting with Leverkusen that he could not remember “playing against such a good team recently”. Bayer 04 always have the ball and appear ultra-dominant. It is almost paradoxical that the attack has increasingly become the Werkself's weak point.
The foundation is defense
Over the past few months, many hymns have been sung to the work of coach Xabi Alonso, and the heroes were usually people like the technician Florian Wirtz, the dangerous goalscorer Victor Boniface, the strategist Granit Xhaka or the clever Jonas Hofmann. But the real origin of success lies elsewhere, even if in modern football all parts of the team are interconnected and dependent on each other: the foundation of strength lies in the defense, which will now become even more important.
Boniface is out until April with an adductor injury, Patrik Schick is out of shape after his many injuries, and attacker Borja Iglesias, who has just been signed by Betis Sevilla, was pale in his first Bundesliga game last weekend in Darmstadt.
Both the upcoming DFB Cup opponents VfB Stuttgart (with Undav and Guirassy, who returned from the Africa Cup) and Bayern (with Kane, Sané and Musiala) are better staffed in this part of the team than Bayer Leverkusen. The Werkself are superior further back.
By far the best defense
When Alonso came to Leverkusen in autumn 2022, the first thing he did was work on his team's defensive behavior; Mockers said last May that Leverkusen had built their way into the Europa League in a rather unsightly and pragmatic manner. “When Xabi Alonso came here, we were in a relatively difficult phase,” remembers Jonathan Tah in an interview on “dfb.de”. “First of all, he made sure that we as a team were much more stable defensively. Before we even took care of the offensive part, that was the focus because we simply conceded too many goals and didn't defend well as a team.” This work is bearing fruit.
Since February 2023, only one team has scored more than two goals against Leverkusen: VfL Bochum in a 3-0 win on the last matchday of last season. In the current season, the league leaders have by far the best defense in the league with 14 goals conceded. “We don’t win games if we’re not good defensively as a team,” says Tah. In five of the six most recent Bundesliga games, Bayer 04 even kept a clean sheet – despite serious changes that Alonso was forced to make.
Because the Ivorian Odilon Kossounou is still at the Africa Cup and Edmond Tapsoba (Burkina Faso) has just returned from this tournament, the three-man chain with Kossounou, Tah and Tapsoba that was set up for many weeks before Christmas had to be rebuilt.
In the meantime, even Tah, who was rested in Augsburg so as not to risk a yellow card for the important game in Leipzig, was missing, and then shortly afterwards was actually suspended in the 0-0 draw against Mönchengladbach. So Hincapié, Stanisic and Andrich formed the defensive chain, which often even contributes a lot to the goal threat.
In the 3-2 win in Leipzig, Tah made it 2-2, and Hincapié scored Leverkusen's third goal deep into stoppage time. If you also add the wing players, who are also trained defenders, it becomes nothing short of spectacular: Jeremie Frimpong has scored seven goals and prepared nine more across all competitions in the current season, while Alejandro Grimaldo, who signed from Benfica in the summer, contributed nine goals and eleven assists success.
Tella “a huge professional”
Last weekend Nathan Tella, who came to the Bundesliga from FC Burnley in the summer and represented Frimpong, scored both goals to make it 2-0 in Darmstadt. “He is a boy who works brutally hard, who is a huge professional,” says Alonso about Tella. That is also praise for the defensive behavior.
With 16 goals and eight assists, Victor Boniface is still a bit more efficient than his more defensive colleagues, and Hofmann has already collected 16 scorer points, but overall it is pretty clear that the recipe for success for the Rhine's possession kings lies in defense.
Borussia Dortmund has been trying in vain to become German champions with attack artists like Aubameyang, Sancho, Dembélé and Haaland for more than a decade. Alonso in Leverkusen, on the other hand, seems to follow an age-old team sports wisdom: “Offense wins games, defense wins championships.” Although no one in Leverkusen would object if, for example, Granit Xhaka (zero goals, zero assists) started to develop a little more goal threat at some point.
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