Leverkusen the team to beat despite Bayern’s summer spree

Patrik Schick, again. The DFL Super Cup rarely provides any pointers for the forthcoming Bundesliga season, but what this year’s curtain raiser seemed to indicate is that maybe last season is still happening. The match-up between Bayer Leverkusen and Stuttgart – last season’s top two, with the former having won both league and DfB Pokal – was a reminder of an extraordinary 23-24 campaign, as was the bristling intensity of Saturday night’s fixture, uncommon for such a nominal showpiece.
And the manner was everything. Even it took a penalty shootout for Leverkusen to lift the fifth major trophy of the club’s 120-year history (and the third in the last four months under Xabi Alonso), the way in which Die Werkself got there suggested that we are probably not looking at a one-hit wonder. They played all but the first 35 minutes against Stuttgart with 10 men at the BayArena – debutant Martin Terrier was sent off for an ill-considered, studs-up lunge – and trailed midway through the second half when Deniz Undav gave the visitors the lead with his first touch.
Yet there was no hint of panic, no launching it in the mixer. Leverkusen passed their way around their opponents looking for an opening, even with time running out, until Schick coolly sidefooted in after a dazzling move with little more than a minute to go in normal time. It was another Leverkusen late show (after so many last-gasp goals against Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, Hoffenheim, Qarabag, Leipzig, Stuttgart, is it even a surprise now?) with the Czech striker as so often the man on the spot.
It was stirring stuff, and a reminder that Leverkusen are the team to beat. They never are against German teams these days, their only defeat in 53 games last season coming to Serie A’s Atalanta in the Europa League final. “We really believe in the system the coach has,” Nathan Tella says. “If it didn’t work we wouldn’t have been in the positions we were last season. Just because it’s a new season, it doesn’t mean our habits need to change.”
Keeping together the core of an unexpectedly winning team is rare but the tone was set for the champions (which still feels almost surreal to say) from the moment Alonso affirmed his commitment to stay, spurning the advances of some of the world’s biggest clubs. In keeping with this ambience of stability – not to mention the club’s quiet efficiency, cultivated over decades – there have been no flights of fancy building the squad, collecting a few sensible pick-ups rather than going for big sexy statement signings. Aleix García, the midfield glue who held together Girona’s extraordinary season in La Liga and performed excellently in the Super Cup, has arrived along with Rennes duo of Terrier and the highly promising centre-back Jeanuël Belocian. As both CEO Fernando Carro and sporting director Simon Rolfes have stressed the window is not shut yet, with defender Jonathan Tah still a possible signing for Bayern, but the waters are calm.
Leverkusen’s stealthy summer has been, almost completely, the exact opposite of Bayern’s. The start to the Rekordmeister’s off-season suggested more of the chaos of recent years, with Alonso, Ralf Rangnick and even old flame Julian Nagelsmann among those to politely decline the vacant head coach position before Vincent Kompany was installed.
Yet many doubts over whether the former Burnley manager could handle one of the apex jobs in European football were almost completely eclipsed by Max Eberl’s explosive early transfer business, snaring Michael Olise, João Palhinha (finally) and Stuttgart’s excellent centre-back Hiroki Ito before the Euros were even done. It was a clear statement of intent.
It’s not all been plain sailing since, from Ito breaking a foot in a pre-season friendly at FC Düren to the struggles in clearing out several surplus players in the squad; the eventual completion of the double deal to send Matthijs de Ligt and Noussair Mazraoui to Manchester United elicited a deep sigh of relief in Bavaria. More need to follow to show that Bayern are really on the way back, with Kompany having minimal margin for error. The recovery of Harry Kane to full physical strength after his tough Euro 2024 is seen at least as important as the new coach’s first steps.
Dortmund are in a similarly tricky reconstructive situation. If the end of Bayern’s run of 11 straight Bundesliga titles was the headline of last term, BVB not being the team to dethrone them left questions needing to be answered. Leverkusen have about half of Dortmund’s budget, telling you all you need to know about the latter’s shortcomings in direction and strategy in recent years.
Comprehensively redefining themselves under a bright new coach, decorated former player Nuri Sahin, they could easily swim or sink but a reaction had to happen after last year’s deeply disappointing fifth place, despite reaching the Champions League final. They have to all intents and purposes Bayern-ed runners-up Stuttgart, signing their top scorer Serhou Guirassy and their centre-back and captain Waldemar Anton. With 33-year-old Pascal Gross arriving to reinforce midfield, this looks more of a win-now project rather the previous emphasis on developing the stars of the future.
How this fits with Sahin’s determination to make his team more energetic and intense will be fascinating to see. Yet just as arresting will be how the reshuffle upstairs works, with the Hans-Joachim Watzke era ending and club legend Lars Ricken promoted to take over. The new order is already showing cracks, with the polarising Sven Mislintat at the centre of a few huge pre-season rows just a few months into his second spell at the club. Watch this space.
Stuttgart’s excellent Super Cup display, which should really have seen them win it, was perhaps even more significant than Leverkusen’s. They have lost some key players but then again they lost their two best, Konstantinos Mavropanos and Wataru Endo, at the beginning of last season, and that didn’t stop them engineering a breathtaking 40-point swing from the previous campaign. Not just keeping the prolific Undav but also hanging on to their coach Sebastian Hoeness (yes, he turned down the Bayern post too) is huge, giving them a clear, exciting philosophy ahead of a demanding Champions League campaign.
Even if Stuttgart did eventually get Undav back on board the Bundesliga has lost a star in Dani Olmo, after Leipzig sold one of Spain’s Euro 2024 mainstays to Barcelona. While Marco Rose said Olmo was “impossible to replace, in football and in human terms”, it did give the club the opportunity to sign Norwegian teenager Antonio Nusa, a wide player with superstar potential who opened his scoring account within seconds of coming on for a Pokal debut at Rot-Weiss Essen. Meanwhile the return of Xavi Simons on a second successive one-year loan deal is great for them but also, arguably, for the Bundesliga itself, keeping one of the division’s elite talents out of the hands of Bayern and thus helping to preserve a degree of competitive balance, hopefully.
Newly promoted St Pauli and first-timers Holstein Kiel are unlikely to be troubling those peaks of the table but should add further colour to the league – one revitalised by freshly minted champions, who have no intention of slipping back anonymously into the pack.