Bestowing new nicknames upon the German double winners has become something of a cottage industry.
Throughout last season’s unprecedented unbeaten domestic campaign, Bayer Leverkusen time and again summoned the kind of mental willpower late in games with which illusionist Uri Geller in his spoon-bending days was synonymous. Sixteen stoppage-time goals in all competitions resulted in “Laterkusen,” which would lead to “Meisterkusen” and “Doublekusen.”
This season there’s a new, less flattering word I’m going to introduce, and I’ll warn you, it’s a bit of a mouthful: “Luckypunchgegentorkusen.”
Let me explain.
Ein Lucky Punch is classic denglisch, the use of seemingly trendy English words or phrases, usually not part of English football vocabulary at all, but which have somehow crept into the German lexicon. It refers to a late goal usually against the run of play to achieve something tangible.
Gegentor is the nice, concise German word for a goal conceded, and so we can afford to create this wonderful new compound word with the now-familiar -kusen suffix.
The latest Lucky Punch was administered by bottom club VfL Bochum and their Japanese attacking midfielder Koji Miyoshi in the 89th minute just before the international break. Leverkusen had scored early on at the Ruhrstadion through Patrik Schick, only to be jolted after captain and goalkeeper Lukas Hradecky had fired a sloppy ball forward setting in motion the events that meant glum faces all round on the one-hour bus trip home.
The stark fact is Leverkusen have lost their 2023-24 indefatigability factor. Last term, die Werkself (Factory XI) seemed to almost imperceptibly up their productivity levels after forging ahead and relentlessly kept the conveyor belt rolling, not dropping a point after taking the lead in any Bundesliga game.
This season with only 10 games gone, Leverkusen have frittered away a staggering 11 points from winning positions. Against RB Leipzig in their opening home game of the league campaign, the glass-jaw factor set in, contriving to turn a 2-0 lead into a 3-2 reverse. While no one should berate a team for drawing in Munich after establishing a 1-0 advantage, since then it’s the draws against Holstein Kiel (a 2-0 lead squandered), Werder Bremen (twice in front and a 90th-minute Gegentor) and now Bochum that truly stand out as missed golden opportunities.
There are different theories as to what has gone awry, even within the team. Sporting CEO Simon Rolfes said last week he feels it’s chiefly down to not being uncompromising enough to close the deal, with a few percentage points missing up and down the side.
Hradecky, while acknowledging his mishap in Bochum, spoke about a lack of the right Körpersprache (body language) while Granit Xhaka has previously described it as being mostly a communications issue within the component parts of the side.
It can also be argued holes in the team’s defensive plan immediately after losing the ball have been highly visible
What’s strange is the squad looks, on paper, even stronger than it did during last season’s success story. The reality, however, is that the four newcomers — Martin Terrier, Aleix García, Jeanuël Belocian and Nordi Mukiele — have, for various reasons, not made themselves indispensable members of the team. García, for example, has been restricted to a mere two Bundesliga starts and there’s often a lack of robustness in central midfield when he does play next to Xhaka as opposed to the more rumbustious Robert Andrich.
Rolfes spent part of the international period in Brazil — a long-standing market for the club — in tandem with the latest Trophy Tour, which Bayer Leverkusen took to New York two months ago. He is surely right when he asserts that form dips, sometimes subtle ones have played a role in the different unfolding narrative.
In my opinion, Hradecky, Edmond Tapsoba and Jeremie Frimpong are three examples of players whose overall performances are markedly poorer than in the Doublekusen campaign. Also, Victor Boniface has hit a barren patch, losing his starting place recently to Schick.
Florian Wirtz has been consistently excellent, but one player can’t do it alone, at least not over an extended period.
Already nine points behind Bayern Munich, Leverkusen’s title ambitions have been effectively vanquished even at this early stage. The UEFA Champions League matches have brought more good (against AC Milan especially) than bad (the second-half thrashing in Liverpool), but I’m not sure anyone of analytical mind would make a strong case for this version of the Werkself to be 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 route to a trophy is shaping up to be a big key in how we characterise what presumably will be Xabi Alonso’s final season under the Bayer Kreuz. But first things first, Saturday’s meeting with Heidenheim — another opponent in the wrong half of the Bundesliga table with the capacity to unleash a Lucky Punch, if Leverkusen are not careful.