RB Leipzig end Leverkusen’s unbeaten run – that may not be where their achievements end (2024)

Bayer Leverkusen’s unbeaten streak is over.

For the first time since May 2023, after 43 domestic matches across 463 days, Leverkusen were defeated, losing 3-2 at home to RB Leipzig on Saturday evening.

Leverkusen have made many miracles. This time, the late goals that have been their speciality could not be found. Xabi Alonso’s side had moved into a 2-0 first-half lead at the BayArena but eventually fell to a Leipzig team full of pace and penetration.

It was a strange game played in an odd mood.

Leipzig coach Marco Rose spent most of it watching from the press box rather than the touchline after two yellow cards for dissent in the space of 30 seconds. Leverkusen, who have been purring along smoothly for as long as anyone can remember, were flat and vulnerable, at the end of a week blighted by unhelpful news stories. And the away side took advantage.

That strange energy around Leverkusen built in the 24 hours before kick-off.

For much of the summer, it had been expected Jonathan Tah, the centrepiece of their defence, would leave for Bayern Munich. That transfer never happened, but the saga was still attritional enough to affect the relationship between the clubs.

Speaking at a supporters’ event in the middle of August, Fernando Carro, Leverkusen’s CEO, made disparaging remarks about Max Eberl, Bayern’s board member for sport. Carro said he thought “nothing, absolutely nothing” of Eberl and would not be negotiating with him further over Tah. It earned him a public rebuke from Jan-Christian Dreesen, his Bayern counterpart, and Carro quickly apologised, admitting that he had been over-emotional.

But then the situation flared up again on Friday night in the hours after Germany’s transfer window closed.

In an interview with Sky Deutschland, Tah’s agent, Max Bielefeld, blamed Carro for the transfer’s failure, criticising his conduct and suggesting his client was still carrying a grievance.

“There is one thing that really complicated the negotiations,” Bielefeld said. “That was the public statements made by Fernando Carro. This shifted the situation away from negotiations into a personal matter and after that, the discussions were poisoned. We all, including Jonathan, would have wished that Fernando Carro had handled it a bit more professionally. From our perspective, that was not professional.”

Leverkusen declined to comment on Bielefeld’s remarks when asked by The Athletic. But Tah, a dressing-room leader and a Germany international, is now into the final year of his contract and showing no indication that he will extend it.

The context was hardly helpful. The cameras lingered on Carro as he sheepishly took his seat before kick-off on Saturday. They dwelt on Tah, too, as he warmed up in the media’s glare.

It was melodrama — the kind that may habitually exist around Bayern, but which Leverkusen rarely experience. The more games they won last season, the more gushing the praise became; they were the antidote to Bayern’s 11 straight Bundesliga titles.

“I would be lying if I said it wasn’t exhausting, with so much back and forth,” Tah told Sky before the game, before insisting that he was happy at the champions. Nobody quite believes that and because Leverkusen lost and Tah was not at his best in the game, this story still has life.

That is not necessarily fair. Leverkusen had chances to equalise and Leipzig goalkeeper Peter Gulacsi was outstanding. While this may have been a defeat, it was hardly an implosion or cause to worry about where Leverkusen may be heading. They created good chances, but they did not take them.

But it still felt like a waypoint for Rose’s Leipzig.

Since joining the club early in the 2022-23 season, his team have been capricious and, while talented, a side who just cannot be trusted.

Quietly though, that view of them has become out of date.

While Leverkusen were building their recording-breaking run, Leipzig were assembling an impressive sequence of their own. Heading into the game on Saturday, Rose’s team had not lost since February, when they were beaten 2-1 by Bayern in Munich.

That form has been missed partly because of the Leverkusen story, which consumed everyone’s attention, but also because of the role Leipzig occupy in German football. Constructed in a way that allows them to artificially conform to the 50+1 rule, they are deeply resented by most fans across the country. Unpopular and unloved, they garner little media attention and tend to be ignored unless there is no choice.

Internally, people at Leipzig feel good about this season and positive about the transfer window that just closed.

Xavi Simons, excellent against Leverkusen last night, was convinced to spend another year at the club on loan from Paris Saint-Germain. Antonio Nusa, the fabulously gifted Norwegian forward, arrived for a low fee. Benjamin Sesko and Lois Openda, their jewels in attack, have been retained and El Chadaille Bitshiabu, 19, and 21-year-old Castello Lukeba, a pair of supremely talented young defenders, are a year older and into their second senior seasons.

And while there have been departures, each has been mitigated by circ*mstances. Dani Olmo was sold to Barcelona, but €60million (£50.6m; $66.4m) for a player who was so often unavailable due to injuries is tolerable. Mohamed Simakan, the talented French defender, was allowed to leave after he received a decadent offer from Al Nassr in the Saudi Pro League, but Feyenoord’s Lutsharel Geertruida, an Eredivisie champion with Arne Slot in 2023, has already arrived as a replacement.

It is worth remembering that Leipzig ran Leverkusen close in both Bundesliga games last season, losing 3-2 twice.

Alonso’s defence was troubled in many of the same ways, too — by Openda’s wicked speed and dead-eyed finishing and by Simon’s roaming runs and bewitching technique. Both were hugely influential again last night — Openda might have given the best performance of his Bundesliga career to date, scoring their second and third goals, but also withstanding a physical battering at the hands of Leverkusen’s centre-backs. The Belgian is gifted, but he can handle himself, too, and typified Leipzig’s combative mood.

And there does tend to be a legacy to this sort of win.

When the full-time whistle blew, Leipzig’s substitutes spilled out across the pitch, as they would to mark a major achievement. Was this that? Maybe.

Rose was without his captain, the suspended Willi Orban. He lost lynchpin midfielder Amadou Haidara after a clash of heads in the first half and midfielders Christoph Baumgartner and Xaver Schlager were both injured and unavailable to start (Baumgartner did come on for the final few minutes). He also, of course, had to watch an hour of the game from a seat near the top of the main stand after a ludicrous display of dissent towards the referee and a strange loss of control.

But still Leipzig got across the line. Yes, for now, we’re only two games into the season, this is just the bookend of a magnificent Leverkusen achievement.

In time, though, you wonder what that belief might be worth to Rose and his players and how it might make them more than theory.

(Top photo: Federico Gambarini/Getty Images)