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Jan Age Fjortoft explains who is leading the race to sign German star Florian Wirtz. (2:30 p. m. )
Giving new nicknames to two-time German winners seems like a cottage industry.
Throughout last season’s unprecedented domestic campaign, Bayer Leverkusen continually summoned the kind of belated intellectual willpower that illusionist Uri Geller was synonymous with in his spoon-bender days. Sixteen goals scored in added time in all competitions resulted in “Laterkusen”, which would later lead to “Meisterkusen” and “Doublekusen”.
This season I’m going to introduce a new, less flattering word, and I warn you that it’s a bit long: “Luckypunchgegentorkusen”.
Let me explain to you.
Ein Lucky Punch is a classic denglisch, the use of probably fancy English words or phrases, which are not normally part of the English football vocabulary, but which have infiltrated the German lexicon. It is a backward goal, often opposed to the development of the game. to achieve something tangible.
Gegentor is the great, concise German word for an conceded goal, so we can take the liberty of creating this glorious new compound word with the now familiar -kusen suffix.
The final Lucky Punch was administered by VfL Bochum and their Japanese attacking midfielder Koji Miyoshi in the 89th minute, just before half-time. Leverkusen had scored early at the Ruhrstadion through Patrik Schick but were rocked after captain and goalkeeper Lukas Hradecky fired a careless ball forward, creating chances that drew grim faces on the hour-long bus return.
The fact is that Leverkusen has lost its tirelessness ahead of 2023-24. Last season, die Werkself (Factory
This season, with only 10 games played, Leverkusen has lost 11 games in a winning position. Against RB Leipzig in their first home game of the league campaign, the glass jaw prevailed, managing to turn a 2-0 lead into a 3. -2 reverse. While no one deserves to blame a team for drawing in Munich after taking a 1-0 lead, it has since drawn against Holstein Kiel (a blown 2-0 lead), Werder Bremen (twice ahead and a Gegentor in the 90th minute) and now Bochum stand out as missed golden opportunities.
There are other theories about what went wrong, even within the team. Sporting CEO Simon Rolfes said last week that he felt this basically because he wasn’t tough enough to seal the deal, missing a few percentage points from the most sensible to the lowest.
Hradecky, while acknowledging the twist of fate in Bochum, spoke of a lack of Körpersprache (body language), while Granit Xhaka in the past described it as basically a communication challenge within the team components.
It can also be argued that the holes in the team’s defensive plan after turning the ball over were very visible.
The strange thing is that the team seems, on paper, even more powerful than during the good fortune of last season. The reality, however, is that the four newcomers (Martin Terrier, Aleix García, Jeanuël Belocian and Nordi Mukiele) have not become, for various reasons, indispensable members of the team. Garcia, for example, has been limited to just two Bundesliga starts and there is a lack of robustness in central midfield when playing with Xhaka, unlike the more vocal Robert Andrich.
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Rolfes spent part of his time abroad in Brazil, a long-standing market for the club, in parallel with the last Trophy Tour, which Bayer Leverkusen brought to New York two months ago. Actually, he is right when he says that sophisticated gaps in form have played a role in the various narratives that unfold.
In my opinion, Hradecky, Edmond Tapsoba and Jeremiah Frimpong are three examples of players whose overall functionality is particularly lower than in Doublekusen’s campaign. Additionally, Victor Boniface has gone through a barren period, recently wasting his starting position against Schick.
Florian Wirtz has been consistently excellent, but one player can’t do it alone, at least not over an extended period.
For nine years now, Bayern Munich and Leverkusen’s name ambitions have been clearly frustrated, even at this initial stage. The UEFA Champions League games were more good (especially against AC Milan) than bad (the second game against Liverpool), but I’m not sure anyone with an analytical brain can argue in favor of this edition of the Werkself. in Munich for the final on May 31, 2025.
However, Munich does loom large for Bayer 04 with a crucial DFB-Pokal third-round meeting against Vincent Kompany & Co. at the Allianz Arena scheduled for a week on Tuesday. In a one-off game, could Leverkusen knock out Bayern? Absolutely. Plus, they’ll be catching the Bavarians on the back of potentially tricky games for them against Paris Saint-Germain and at Borussia Dortmund.
The short path to a trophy is emerging as a vital key in how we characterize what will likely be Xabi Alonso’s last season with Bayer Kreuz. But first, Saturday’s match against Heidenheim, another rival at the bottom of the Bundesliga table, capable of triggering a Lucky Punch, if Leverkusen is careful.