{"id":261188,"date":"2025-11-04T04:26:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T04:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/261188\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T04:26:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T04:26:10","slug":"leverkusens-capitulation-at-bayern-confirms-demise-of-an-engaging-rivalry-bundesliga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/261188\/","title":{"rendered":"Leverkusen\u2019s capitulation at Bayern confirms demise of an engaging rivalry | Bundesliga"},"content":{"rendered":"

If it was going to end, it was always likely to end here. That it was going to end exactly like this, though, was not so predictable. Bayer Leverkusen arrived at the Allianz Arena on a run of 37 Bundesliga away games unbeaten, and they never looked like extending it. You will forgive the Bundesliga neutral for mourning not the loss of an incredible record-breaking sequence which stretched back to 27 May 2023 \u2013 when Xabi Alonso\u2019s team<\/a> were heavily beaten by relegation-battling Bochum \u2013 but the demise of a competitor to Bayern Munich not seen since J\u00fcrgen Klopp\u2019s Borussia Dortmund were in their thrilling pomp.<\/p>\n

This was less an authentic Topspiel and more a piercing afterparty hangover, a tough supermarket-bread pretzel and lukewarm coffee, a Monday morning letter from HMRC, a black and white declaration of unavoidable dues owed. All of which, of course, was great for Bayern as they limbered up for this week\u2019s Champions League meeting (a real-deal Topspiel) against holders Paris Saint-Germain, with the recently re-signed Vincent Kompany able to show the authority and pragmatism that led him to this point by leaving Harry Kane, Luis D\u00edaz and Michael Olise on the substitutes\u2019 bench.<\/p>\n

This is no criticism of Kompany or Bayern, who have earned the right to manage the resources of hardly their biggest squad in recent memory as they see fit. After dispatching the 2024 champions \u2013 or what\u2019s left of them \u2013 Bayern\u2019s record for the season stands at a magnificent 15 games, 15 wins.<\/p>\n

In many ways this latest one was Kompany\u2019s governance of the campaign in microcosm: the revival of Serge Gnabry, who scored the opener midway through the first half; the make-do-and-mend approach which is successful enough to look anything but with Konrad Laimer and now young Tom Bischof excelling in the full-back positions (they assisted the first two goals, with Laimer laying on a first Bundesliga<\/a> strike for Nicolas Jackson); the status to leave out the likes of Kane and it not being a big issue. They remained impossible to contain, racing into a 3-0 half-time lead which they never relinquished. The coach has, in the words of S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung\u2019s Martin Schneider, \u201ctransformed Bayern back into a beast\u201d.<\/p>\n

Vincent Kompany began with Harry Kane, Luis D\u00edaz and Michael Olise on the bench. Photograph: Christina Pahnke\/sampics\/Corbis\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Bayern were nevertheless met with little resistance. Leverkusen had an xG of 0.02 at half-time, and that rose to just 0.12 after a second half of Bayern cruising with a comfortable lead and making a raft of changes. The characteristically frank Robert Andrich said: \u201cWe were never in a zone in the first half where we were going to be able to compete with Bayern.\u201d One wonders how much of Kasper Hjulmand\u2019s over-cautious approach \u2013 with an apparent 3-4-2-1 quickly becoming a 5-4-1, and with their star Alejandro Grimaldo and the experienced Jonas Hofmann also both on the bench \u2013 was residual damage from Die Werkself\u2019s own recent Champions League brush with PSG, in which they played bravely and creditably in the first half and still found themselves 4-1 down at the break en route to a humiliating 7-2 loss.<\/p>\n

Just as Bayern can\u2019t be blamed for the death of competition, neither can Leverkusen. OK, the Erik ten Hag appointment<\/a> was a misstep but much of this season\u2019s pain was inevitable after the mass sales of the summer. Hjulmand has a packed calendar and little time to create a cohesive unit from a set of talented players who are still on course to make the top four; a good outcome. As a club Leverkusen deserve credit for recognising who and where they are, and that they can\u2019t be Bayern. But having been spoiled in this fixture in recent years, waving goodbye to an engaging rivalry is a sweet sorrow.<\/p>\n

Quick GuideBundesliga resultsShow<\/p>\n

Augsburg 0-1 Borussia Dortmund<\/p>\n

Heidenheim 1-1 Eintracht Frankfurt<\/p>\n

Union Berlin 0-0 Freiburg<\/p>\n

Mainz 1-1 Werder Bremen<\/p>\n

RB Leipzig 3-1 Stuttgart<\/p>\n

St Pauli 0-4 Borussia M\u00f6nchengladbach<\/p>\n

Bayern Munich 3-0 Bayer Leverkusen<\/p>\n

Cologne 4-1 Hamburg<\/p>\n

Wolfsburg 2-3 Hoffenheim<\/p>\n

Thank you for your feedback.<\/p>\n

Talking points<\/p>\n

Even if they can hardly be seen as a genuine threat to Bayern \u2013 despite having developed considerably from their 6-0 humbling in Munich on the season\u2019s opening night \u2013 RB Leipzig are going a long way towards arguing they are the best of the rest. Ole Werner\u2019s team remain second, five points behind, after a beguiling display to polish off another of the early season high-fliers, Stuttgart. Their new pieces are clicking, with the excellent 18-year-old Yan Diomande shining (and scoring) again and centre-forward R\u00f4mulo clinching a 3-1 win late on after taking advantage of Alexander N\u00fcbel\u2019s stumble. \u201cHis name says it all,\u201d said the latter of the former. \u201cHe\u2019s a diamond.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jobe Bellingham may not have had quite as seismic an impact on the Bundesliga so far as Diomand\u00e9, but he made a valuable cameo in Dortmund\u2019s narrow win at struggling Augsburg on Friday night that kept them third, earning praise from his coach Niko Kovac. \u201cHe\u2019s always present, he has great physicality and a technical quality that he showed again here in his 30 minutes on the pitch,\u201d Kovac told Sky after Bellingham helped to secure the result with a perfect last-ditch tackle on Elvis Rexhbecaj, preventing the Kosovan from scoring an equaliser. \u201cI have no doubts about him. Quite the opposite. We\u2019re building him up step-by-step. In fact, it\u2019s going even faster than I expected because the boy has so much quality.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a week of considerable progress too for Borussia M\u00f6nchengladbach, following up the 3-1 DfB Pokal win over second-tier Karslruhe with a first Bundesliga win since March, ending a desperate run of 15 without a win \u2013 and with great style, as they eventually thumped St Pauli 4-0, with a brace from Haris Tabakovic and a virtuoso midfield display from the renewed Florian Neuhaus, who had been banished to the under-23 team at the start of the season. It was timely too, with Heidenheim and Mainz both performing creditably in isolation during 1-1 draws with Eintracht Frankfurt and Werder Bremen respectively. But their failures to win allowed Gladbach to lift themselves out of the bottom two with their win in Hamburg. Despite the impressive display and result their sporting director, Rouven Schr\u00f6der, is expected to hold off naming Eugen Polanski, the interim coach, as the permanent successor to Gerardo Seoane, with the derby against K\u00f6ln to come ahead of the international pause.<\/p>\n

skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n

Sign up to Football Daily<\/p>\n

Kick off your evenings with the Guardian’s take on the world of football<\/p>\n

Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n

Jobe Bellingham played a key role in Dortmund\u2019s win over Augsburg. Photograph: Alexandra Beier\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

K\u00f6ln beat fellow promoted side Hamburg on Sunday afternoon to enter the derby in fine fettle, with new centre-forward Ragnar Ache adding a first Bundesliga goal to his Pokal strike against Bayern in the week. But everyone had almost forgotten about Ache\u2019s opener by the end of a tortuously long second half, with referee Daniel Schlager and his team taking a ludicrous six minutes to chalk off a F\u00e1bio Vieira goal for the visitors, which had seemed a fairly open and shut case (Schlager defended himself by arguing that \u201csafety takes precedence over speed\u201d, though the restless crowd at the RheinEnergie Stadion clearly felt differently even if the process eventually found in their favour. It led to 12 minutes of stoppage time \u2013 a long enough stretch to turn the home side\u2019s 2-1 lead against nine men into a comprehensive (on paper, at least) 4-1 thumping with additional goals on the counter by the excellent Said El Mala and Jakub Kaminski.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If it was going to end, it was always likely to end here. That it was going to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261189,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-261188","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}