2024-04-16 08:32:13
“Bayer” (Leverkusen) finally got rid of the “eternal second” curse, which it deserved over the years, although not with such “success” as “Levski”, which is the record holder in this regard in the Bulgarian championship.
In the year when the club turns 120 years old and a total of 45 years after the fall of the “aspirins” in the Bundesliga, they managed to become champions of Germany.
Much of the credit for that goes to Spanish coach Xabi Alonso, who took over in October when they had come uncomfortably close to the relegation zone. The former brain in the midfield of “Liverpool”, “Real” (Madrid) and “Bayern” stabilized the “aspirins”, got them into the top 6 and after transfer tuning in the summer made them a machine.
Bayer won their first league title after a 5-0 win over visiting Werder Bremen in the 29th round, or 5 games before the end of the season. This was a total of 43 matches for Alonso’s squad this season in all competitions and they are still unbeaten – 38 wins and 5 draws.
But back to said curse. “Bayer” took the silver medals in the German football elite a total of 5 times. Runners-up finishes in 2000 and 2002, especially in the first year, came with extremely painful last-minute standings twists. In the second, this was combined with a loss in the finals of the German Cup and the Champions League.
This gave rise to the nicknames Vicecouzen and Neverkuzen. Now, however, the supposedly cursed “Bayer” not only got rid of them and was already renamed Winnerkusen, but also became the fatal 13th different title holder in the Bundesliga since its inception in 1963.
The leader is “Bayern” (32), followed by “Borussia” (D) and “Borussia” (M) with 5 each, “Werder” has 4, with 3 each are “Hamburger” and “Stuttgart”, with 2 each – ” Kaiserslautern” and “Cologne”, “Eintracht” (Br), “Munich 1860”, “Nuremberg”, “Wolfsburg” and the 13th warrior – “Bayer” once reached the gold.