When <a href="https://www.archysport.com/2022/01/bayer-leverkusen-wins-at-borussia-monchengladbach/" title="Bayer Leverkusen wins at Borussia Monchengladbach”>Florian Wirtz was looking for his place, the football paparazzi were on their toes. They followed the young national player as he made his way to the substitutes’ bench alongside his fellow players – for the first time this season and out of necessity after a “minor injury” from the international trip. A short series was broken, another remained. Because if there’s one thing you can rely on in Bundesliga football, it’s the fact that there will always be goals in the duel between Bayer Leverkusen and Eintracht Frankfurt. In 78 first division duels between the clubs there was never a zero score, but there were many games with five or more goals, sometimes five or six for a team.
On Saturday, too, it quickly became certain that there would again be analyzes of mistakes that led to goals conceded. And mistakes that surprisingly didn’t lead to goals. The highlight of a game that was one of the most spectacular in recent years came in stoppage time: Bayer goalkeeper Lukas Hradecky wanted to shoot the ball out of the danger zone when the score was 2-1, but he only hit his central defender Jonathan Tah just before the edge of the penalty area (“It’s just so big”), the ball bounced towards the goal line, Frankfurt’s Hugo Ekitiké jumped a little too early and couldn’t hit the ball hard enough.
Shortly before he landed, Tah gave him a push with his left elbow while he was still in the air, which the Eintracht striker was unable to compensate for. He fell and Tah hit him with his foot while he was lying on the ground. In the end, Bayer 04 were able to clarify the situation and both parties then complained that their view of things was the only correct one – but why referee Felix Brych, who had already submitted two video evidence that afternoon, stopped watching the scene should remain a secret .
Eintracht coach Dino Toppmöller said he appreciated Brych afterwards: “But the performance today, I’m a bit speechless. Unfortunately, not everyone on the field was in top form today. This game deserved that.”
Ekitiké was “in the air” and then he made contact from behind. “You lose your balance,” said Toppmöller: “Otherwise he heads it into the empty goal from three meters. If he doesn’t see it and check it, then we don’t need the video evidence. That annoyed us extremely, the boys are very angry.” Leverkusen sports director Simon Rolfes saw it differently, he said: “You are still allowed to touch people, we don’t play contactless.”
Of the two previous penalties, Victor Boniface had given the one for Leverkusen very weakly into the arms of Kevin Trapp (9th minute), while Omar Marmoush confirmed his run six minutes later by taking the penalty after a foul by Robert Andrich on the penalty area line 0:1 used. Before both penalties, Brych looked at the screen for a long time until he came to a decision. This is probably why the people of Frankfurt wondered why he didn’t do it in the situation with Tah and Ekitiké.
In any case, the deficit didn’t bother the champions much, and after the sweet combination via Andrich and Amine Adli as well as the one-two from Andrich and Martin Terrier and the crowning, flat direct shot from the German international into the far corner, the score was justly 1-1.
Leverkusen’s master coach Because after the 1-1 draw, the factory club from the other side of the Rhine collapsed – and Alonso got a quick insight into why the expensive team was in a relegation zone at the time. Bayer 04’s crazy transformation from relegation candidate to champion would probably not have happened so quickly without this humiliation; Alonso saw that players like Amiri and Demirbay didn’t fit into his team (neither on the pitch nor in front of the TV microphones) and built the ideal axis around Tah, Andrich and Xhaka as well as Wirtz and Boniface.
Leverkusen has often lost leads recently – not this time
Looking back also helps to understand how both teams started this season. Thanks to Marmoush and Etikité, Frankfurt has turned into one of the most dangerous counterattack machines in the league. Compared to the previous season, when Leverkusen triumphed 5-1 at the Main in the final spurt of the league and turned around every tight game in the final spurt, Leverkusen was missing a little in every department – but in Xabi Alonso’s complex and risky system, a little is enough to get really out of sync. Of course it can also affect Leverkusen, no one had assumed that the Werkself would never lose again – but the way Leverkusen treated teams like Gladbach (after a 2-0 lead), Wolfsburg (after 2-1) at the start of the season, Letting Leipzig (2-0) and recently promoted Kiel (2-0) get back into the game was not just careless, but striking. After six games, the champions had lost a less than masterful seven points. For comparison: at the end of the 2023/2024 season there was a total of… zero!
All of this had led to a lack of self-confidence. There were times in which Bayer played masterfully (especially against Leipzig), but only in a certain phase. The derogatory gestures immediately piled up, mostly from or because of Boniface, who, interestingly enough, no teammate consoled this time after his missed penalty.
None of this stopped Bayer 04 from putting in their best performance of the season so far. As long as Wirtz remained outside, the Kleinklein experts from Leverkusen often approached the opponent’s penalty area with long diagonal passes. In total, the hosts created nine big chances, and when Wirtz came onto the field (65th), he made the game smaller and even more dangerous – and Bayer dominated thanks to their class. The overdue 2-1, in which Wirtz suddenly came from the right and Boniface headed in the cross, extended two series: Leverkusen won at home for the tenth time in a row in the Bundesliga against Frankfurt, and goalkeeper Kevin Trapp looked unhappy with Boniface’s winning goal.
However, one has to say: Even if the victory was deserved, no one should have complained about another penalty for Frankfurt. And then suddenly there would have been completely different discussions.
