Bayer Leverkusen are back doing what they do. Scoring late goals and winning in the shadow of full time.
Tuesday’s 1-0 victory over Inter arrived courtesy of an 88th minute winner from Nordi Mukiele. It was the first goal Simone Inzaghi’s side have conceded in Europe all season and it brought Xabi Alonso and his Leverkusen substitutes bursting from the dug-out in celebration.
Odd, because even a 0-0 draw would have been enough for them to retain their course for the knockout rounds. But, equally, not really that strange because Leverkusen have been yearning for a win like this all season. Beyond these three points virtually guaranteeing their European progress, the win — both the nature of it and the calibre of the team it was against — felt like a jolt of life for a side who have not quite been themselves.
The defending Bundesliga champions are — most likely — already out of the title race in Germany. For Alonso and his players, this season was always going to be more about European football, with domestic standards a likely casualty. But the Champions League has hardly been a tour de force, either. It’s not as simple as emphasising one competition over another; teams tend not to be able to drift effortlessly between moods every few days.
And Leverkusen have shown that. They have certainly been competent in Europe, but they have not yet met expectation or acquired any really legitimacy. A scratchy 1-0 win over Milan was useful but unconvincing. A 5-0 thumping of RB Salzburg was reassuringly comprehensive. But a poor draw with Brest (1-1) and a thrashing by Liverpool at Anfield (4-0) gave little sense of a team who could really contend.
In a way, Alonso deciding to stay at Leverkusen has worked against him. In his first full season, the double winning 2023-24 campaign, the story was his success and the absurd standard he and his players were able to maintain in staying unbeaten. Now, with Leverkusen’s excellence old news and the players suffering an inevitable emotional comedown, the focus has shifted towards their imperfections.
Alonso is like the college athlete who decides to stay in school rather than declare for the draft. In Year One, nothing but raw praise. In Year Two, doubts and criticism abound.
But Leverkusen have acquired real flaws. They are seven points behind Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga because they have been careless with their leads in games, drawing from winning positions against Holstein Kiel, Bochum and Werder Bremen this season, none of whom are powerful sides. They nearly did it again against St Pauli last Saturday, slipping from 2-0 up to 2-1, and then having to endure a difficult final few minutes.
Alonso directs his Leverkusen players from the touchline (Hesham Elsherif/Anadolu via Getty Images)
They are missing centre-forward Victor Boniface, who is injured until the new year and so key to the way they attack. But the difficulties are more attributable to a drop in defensive standards, which itself seems linked to a slight loss of either tension, focus or both.
Leverkusen’s record in the Champions League is good enough. They have conceded five in five games, four of which were in that game at Anfield. But 20 goals conceded in 13 Bundesliga games is only four fewer than they shipped over the whole of last season.
There is no systemic problem and only Odilon Kossounou has left the club since last year. Looking at some of the goals conceded over the past four months, they seem to suit the mood of a team who do not have quite as much to prove. A tackle not quite made. A runner not quite tracked. A pocket of space not closed down quite quickly enough.
Together, these amount to tiny, almost imperceptible differences from last year, but they have still become common enough to be worthy of comment.
And they were almost prominent against Inter, too. The match was flat and its lack of jeopardy seemed characteristic of the new, more forgiving Champions League format. Inter were half-strength and played like it. They were resilient, but had little thrust and carried only a mild threat. Even so — and despite Inzaghi leaving Federico Dimarco, Lautaro Martinez and Nicolo Barella on the bench — they almost profited from Leverkusen’s curious fragility.
Davide Frattesi was allowed to drift unmarked towards the back post midway through the first half and really ought to have hit the target. Later, Leverkusen faffed over a defensive exit, and Inter should have punished them from the turnover.
This has been what Leverkusen’s season has been like. Until Mukiele’s winner, it was another one of those games. It was destined to be 90 minutes during which Alonso’s side had teased their class, but ultimately showed themselves to be less than they were and not quite able to shake their Bundesliga ennui.
The goal did not change the performance or make the game any better. But it did alter the rhythm of the season and, even slightly, the tenor of this Champions League campaign.
Leverkusen’s players celebrate Mukiele’s late winner (Hesham Elsherif/Anadolu via Getty Images)
And that matters, because Leverkusen are a team of habit. Talk to members of last year’s squad about their success, particularly about the habit of winning games that mattered and rescuing or winning points at the last, and they will invariably describe how much the team depended on its own belief. They will talk about knowing that goals would arrive, even when they did not seem likely, and trusting their football. Perhaps that is what has been quietly eroding? The trust. That inevitability. The determination to be special.
This win — a scrappy game settled by a scrappier goal — will not entirely restore any of those virtues. Not by itself.
But it felt thrilling in the way that last season so often did and will tweak the muscle memory of a team that has always been powered by its own momentum.
(Top photo: Hesham Elsherif/Anadolu via Getty Images)
