Executives at Bayer Leverkusen, the long-running but usually middleweight German soccer team, have been receiving these messages since at least February. Some were delivered in person, a silent blessing after yet another victory. Others came via WhatsApp, unsolicited and unexpected notes from peers and acquaintances and, to their occasional surprise, traditional enemies.
After all, football is fiercely tribal. Rivals do not readily offer each other encouragement or praise. But as the German championship season gathered pace, many wanted to hail Leverkusen’s impending achievement: with each victory they moved closer to becoming national champions for the first time.
And that meant – just as importantly – that Bayern Munich were not.
Leverkusen will cross the finish line this weekend and end Bayern’s championship run that stretches back more than a decade. At least that’s what should be the case: to win the title, Leverkusen only needs one victory, which could come as early as their match against Werder Bremen on Sunday, or a defeat for Bayern.
The triumph was a long time coming, in a sense; the club was founded 120 years ago, in 1904, before the city of Leverkusen technically existed. But in another sense, it happened faster than expected.
Six months ago, the team’s charismatic coach, Xabi Alonso, 42, said he would accept the idea that his team could win the championship only if they were still in contention in April. As things stand, he could win the title so soon that he wouldn’t be able to celebrate it properly: the season is still in full swing and Leverkusen still have at least two trophies to conquer.
Whenever the title comes, the club will host a low-key post-match party for the players and their families at its stadium, the BayArena. But it will only organize the traditional parade – during which its supporters will have the opportunity to greet the players – on May 26, the day after the conclusion of the country’s other major national competition, the German Cup. (Leverkusen are also favorites to win that one.)
Organizing this celebration was a real challenge: Leverkusen, a small town sandwiched between Cologne and Düsseldorf, does not have a municipal building with a ceremonial balcony large enough for the team to welcome its supporters. (The club said it had several options in mind, although nothing has been decided.)
“We will decorate our city in black and red wherever we can,” city mayor Uwe Richrath said in a statement.
It’s not a problem the club – or city authorities – have had to deal with before. Bayer Leverkusen, founded more than a century ago as a sports center for workers at the nearby Bayer chemical plant, has won only two major honors in its long history. The most recent dates from 1993.
Instead, Leverkusen became almost synonymous with agonizing defeat. In 2002, the club took the anglicized nickname “Neverkusen” after missing out on the league title, the German Cup and the Champions League, Europe’s flagship football competition, at the final hurdle. This reputation is so deeply rooted in the soul of the club that Bayer Leverkusen has patented its German equivalent, Vizekusen.
Alonso’s team will, in the coming weeks, exorcise these ghosts in quite a spectacular way. His team has yet to lose a single game this season, and they can still finish the campaign with more major honors (three) than they have in their entire history.
This achievement has significance that will extend far beyond his hometown.
In recent years, the ritual dominance of Bayern Munich, the country’s largest and by far richest club, has become a source of considerable concern. both to German fans and to the league itself – as the annual race to win the league, the Bundesliga, begins to look stale and predictable.
As the numerous messages that have flowed to Bayer Leverkusen attest, the prospect of a changing of the guard, even if it proves temporary, does not cause little relief within German football.
“I can absolutely say it’s great for the Bundesliga,” said Peer Naubert, marketing director of Bundesliga International, the organization that promotes German football abroad. “Having the same champion for 11 consecutive years hasn’t had a negative impact, but it hasn’t had a positive impact either.”
Bayer Leverkusen’s success has allowed the Bundesliga to tell a different story to its international audience. At least part of this can be attributed to Alonso himself: it’s striking, for example, how much Leverkusen’s social media output highlights their coach, a beloved former Liverpool player, Real Madrid and Bayern, three of the most popular clubs in the world.
But the league as a whole has also seen concrete benefits, Mr. Naubert said. “In terms of awareness, interest and the number of avid fans,” he said, citing a metric used by the Bundesliga to describe viewers who tune in regularly, “we have seen a significant increase.”
A lot more people are watching Leverkusen games than in the past, he said, but more people are watching other teams as well. There has been a corresponding increase in the league’s social media footprint. “There’s a certain freshness, I think,” Mr. Naubert said.
Fan reaction was mixed. It would be an exaggeration to suggest that Germany is thrilled at the prospect of Leverkusen winning the championship. Supporters are too loyal to their own clubs and German football is too regionalized for that. The club also does not have the large diaspora that rivals like Bayern or Borussia Dortmund have, and therefore does not intrude on the national consciousness as much as others.
Leverkusen also occupies a somewhat difficult position in the German football firmament. As an offshoot of giant Bayer, it is one of the few exceptions to the much-loved German model: the so-called 50+1 rule, according to which supporters must be the majority owners of their clubs. This is a long-standing exception, but it remains an exception.
That status means Leverkusen is “a kind of original sin,” said Dario Minden, spokesman for Unsere Kurve, a group representing Germany’s organized fans. It is this corporate support, he believes, that has allowed the club to withstand the financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic better than other teams.
“The important thing to see is that the only one to break Bayern’s dominance was a construct of a giant pharmaceutical company,” Mr Minden said.
But Leverkusen’s notoriety is no balm for the financial imbalance that has allowed Bayern to win the championship every year since 2012, he said.
Even the fact that Leverkusen is confident it can build on its success – Alonso has turned down offers from Liverpool and Bayern to stay as coach next year, and the team hopes to keep its star player, Florian Wirtz – is not not evidence of a new change. , a fairer dawn for the league rivals.
As an Eintracht Frankfurt fan, Mr. Minden admitted, he takes no joy in a team other than his own winning the championship. “But maybe that’s because I’m a bad person,” he said.
Yet one aspect of the championship brought him some comfort. “We have this nice word,” he said. “Schadenfreude.”
Like much of Germany, Mr Minden may not be actively celebrating Leverkusen’s impending victory. He can, however, take some comfort in the fact that it means Bayern Munich, after 11 long years, will once again be able to experience what it means to finish second.
