Xavi Alonso guided Bayer Leverkusen to their first Bundesliga title in their 120-year history after their dominating 5-0 victory over Werder Bremen on Sunday evening.
With five games remaining, Leverkusen led by Xabi Alonso knew a win would guarantee the title, and they displayed a commanding performance without any indication of jitters.
Victor Boniface, Granit Xhaka, and Florian Wirtz all scored goals to extend their unbeaten streak to an incredible 43 games in all competitions.
After five second-place finishes in their history, Leverkusen’s inaugural victory keeps their ambition of an incredible treble alive and permanently removes the “Neverkusen” moniker off their team.
Ten minutes remained, and the irate supporters started migrating to the sidelines. A few even stormed the pitch while the game was still in progress.
At the ninety-minute mark, the stands quickly began to empty as distraught fans came onto the pitch to join the players in celebrating. Leverkusen’s players waved the crowd back, and some of them did so for a short while.
With 29 games played, Leverkusen has the greatest point total in German league history (79), 16 ahead of second-place Bayern and third-place Stuttgart.
“It’s impossible to describe. Personally I can’t quite grasp what we did. I needed to go back to the changing room to clear my head,” Wirtz told DAZN.
“We’ve already started the party with the supporters.”
Wirtz, who moved from neighbouring Cologne at the age of 16 and grew up just 20 minutes away in Pulheim, told DAZN he “could not imagine what we would achieve at the start of the season”.
“It was when we started winning some matches, with a dominant style of play, that’s when I realised we could do a little better than just making the Champions League.”
The Leverkusen bus reached the 30,000-seat BayArena, navigating through a sea of red and black-clad supporters, ninety minutes before kickoff.
In remembrance of the club’s coach, supporters had temporarily painted signs along the main thoroughfare reading “Xabi Alonso Street” in place of Bismarck Street.
Alonso benched stars Wirtz, Jeremie Frimpong, and Alex Grimaldo—the latter player for the first time this season—in preparation for Thursday’s Europa League trip to London to take on West Ham. Alonso made seven changes to his starting lineup.
The home team took the lead thanks to a goal from the fit-again Boniface, who was making his first start since mid-December. Grimaldo’s replacement, Piero Hincapie, had an early attempt saved.
After 22 minutes, Jonas Hofmann was tackled by Julian Malatini of Bremen in the box. The referee pointed to the spot after VAR asked him to watch the contact again on the monitor.
To the delight of the home crowd, Boniface calmly took the penalty and stroked it past a defenceless Michael Zetterer.
Just before halftime, Hofmann nearly found himself in the scoring circle again when his pass found Amine Adli, who fired against the bar.
Bremen had a great start to the second half, but on minute sixty, Boniface found Xhaka, who scored a long-range rocket and slapped his badge in front of the jubilant home crowd, ending Bremen’s chances of spoiling the party.
Eight minutes later, from nearly the exact same position on the pitch, Wirtz, who replaced Adli at halftime, repeated Xhaka’s effort.
Leverkusen celebrated their almost men tag victory as Wirtz added another goal with seven minutes left and completed his hat-trick in the ninetieth.
Earlier on Sunday, Freiburg defeated Darmstadt 1-0 thanks to a goal from Ritsu Doan in the 36th minute, moving the bottom-place hosts closer to instant relegation.
With just two wins this year and no wins since October, Darmstadt is now dead last with five games left, eight points below second-bottom and thirteen points from safety.
Photo by EPA/CHRISTOPHER NEUNDORF
