Bayer Leverkusen completes unbeaten season as Granit Xhaka beats Kaiserslautern in DFB-Pokal final

BERLIN — Even though it wasn’t quite the history they were hoping to make on Wednesday morning, it wasn’t bad for Bayer Leverkusen either. Fifty-two and one, the first German doubles winners to go an entire domestic campaign without defeat. The fact that it did not come with a Europa League title should hardly weaken the triumph of a club that has so often witnessed the glory of others.

The victory was more closely fought than it could have been, but playing with ten men for more than half of the DFB Pokal gave Germany the chance to see a different side to Leverkusen. Xabi Alonso’s men went 51 without defeat, mainly due to the quality of their players, tactics and coaching. But even teams with all those qualities don’t do what Leverkusen almost did. You’ll need a bit of bloodlust to pair with your top-notch Granit Xhaka walloping.

Not that many expected Kaiserslautern, champions of Germany in relatively recent history but recently struggling to avoid the drop from the 2. Bundesliga, to pose much of a challenge to Leverkusen’s quest for domestic invincibility. The tifo before the match – a red devil shrouded in smoke, a volcano billowing behind him – warned of fire and brimstone. The representatives of the Westkurve That certainly delivered, but when a shot at Lukas Hradecky’s goal prompted eight flares to be let off, you sensed that the Kaiserslautern faithful should have known from the start that there wouldn’t be much to celebrate against the champions.

That certainly seemed to be the case when, after 17 minutes of increasingly assertive possession, Xhaka cut out the center man and smashed the ball home from 30 yards. He only scores bangers, they say in Leverkusen. It says everything about his and his teammates’ remarkable season that this might not even make the podium of Xhaka goals for the season.

Everyone knew what would happen next, the slow rhythm of pass after pass in the form of Alonso’s playing days. He may recoil when the label of tiki-taka is applied to his Leverkusen side, but he also seems to understand the value of slowing down, quelling the chaos on the away end by passing the ball between Xhaka, Jonathan Tah and whoever else to cycle in black. red that longs for a touch.

It was all going so smoothly until Odilon Kossounou stretched just too far to put a ball out of reach. Instead, his studs caught Boris Tomiak’s ankle and for the first time in 364 days, Leverkusen played a man short. What they’ve asked of so many of the opponents they’ve faced: stay steadfast, survive possession, break out when you can. The inventive 3-4-2-1 that took German fields beyond their natural boundaries suddenly became two banks of four, what we have, we keep.

July 4, early in the away match, which delayed the restart of play by around three minutes, gave substitutes Josip Stanisic and Amine Adli time to adjust to the occasion. Kaiserslautern saw more ball in total than in the first half, in which Xhaka threatened to overpower the opponent completely, but that did not suit them very well.

This was a side that was certainly prepared by veteran head coach Friedhelm Funkel to hit Leverkusen hard on the counter and it was there that they posed the biggest threat. Twice in three minutes around the hour mark, Ragnar Ache led a man to the gut, driving wide from distance, when holding on to possession might have produced more chances. Given the chaos those half-chances created, you couldn’t help but wonder whether an equalizer wouldn’t leave this ground in a suitable state to host the European Championship.

There was never an answer. Whatever Alonso said to Florian Wirtz as he paused a quick throw to embrace his star playmaker, it was enough. He got Leverkusen singing again, winning the ball high and unleashing counters that Jeremy Frimpong might have created more of. In any case, Kaiserslautern did not find ten Leverkusen men an easier opponent than the top tier had found eleven.