Bayer Leverkusen clinch historic Bundesliga title with rout of Werder | Bundesliga

The seats started to empty with round 10 minutes remaining. First a number of, then of their dozens, after which of their a whole lot and 1000’s: Bayer Leverkusen followers pouring down the steps, massing behind the promoting hoardings, separated from the pitch solely by a skinny yellow string of ­stewards. Ready for his or her time. Ready for the second after they may not be held again.

“Ihr werdet nie deutscher Meister!” rival followers at all times used to sing as a taunt to their Leverkusen counterparts. You’ll by no means be German champions! Over the lengthy years of no, the lengthy years of almost, the 5 runners-up finishes, the six third locations, the splutters and the collapses, even perhaps Leverkusen followers started to imagine it too. Now, because the minutes ticked away, and with a scrumptious irony, they sang those self same phrases to themselves: a requiem to the previous Bayer 04 being buried, a hymn to the brand new one being born.

At 7.20pm on a cool April night, Bayer Leverkusen beat Werder Bremen 5-0 to develop into ­Bundesliga champions for the primary time of their 120-year historical past. For all of the ­pandemonium that ensued within the minutes after a closing whistle that no person may hear, the sprinting hordes and the pink flare smoke and the vanishing inexperienced grass, maybe probably the most poignant motif was the sheer variety of grown males nonetheless ­sitting of their seats, quietly weeping. Nonetheless not fairly believing within the dream, even because it was changing into flesh in entrance of their eyes.

It’s laborious to visualise one thing that has by no means bodily existed earlier than. Even now, with the deed accomplished, it’s laborious to know what to make of this excellent Leverkusen staff, with its paucity of family names, its modest finances, its century of historic baggage, the underdog membership owned by the pharmaceutical big with the £41bn annual turnover.

Performed 29, gained 25, drawn 4. Bayern Munich, champions for the final 11 seasons, not simply dethroned however defenestrated. Even the all-time Bundesliga factors report – set by the treble profitable Bayern aspect of 2012‑13 – is beneath risk. The place did this come from? The place does it go? Maybe any try to course of the dimensions of the achievement has to start with that sense of sheer incredulity, the shredded logic, the shattered expectations.

Even because the Leverkusen followers gathered within the afternoon sunshine on the highway now briefly rechristened Xabi-Alonso-Allee, carrying their flags and flares and cardboard fashions of the Bundesliga trophy, shopping for their celebratory scarves and T-shirts, there was nonetheless a type of unreality to the afternoon. The names on the reproduction shirts – Son Heung-Min, Michael Ballack, Kevin Volland, Bernd Schneider – evoked a special and but extra acquainted age, each shirt a slice of the previous, a reminiscence of a staff who by no means fairly made it.

Regulars on the BayArena had by no means seen the encircling streets this crowded three hours earlier than a sport. In a means that is the Bayer situation: a membership combating not simply rivals on the pitch however a wider apathy off it. ­Striving to be taken severely. To be seen as actual. Leverkusen, let’s be sincere, will not be a lot of an actual city. An enormous aspirin manufacturing unit with a soccer staff and some sq. homes connected to it. Twinned with Bracknell, which feels about proper. A spot that doesn’t start or finish, however simply type of dissolves into the fringes of Cologne, a metropolis that doesn’t care about it within the slightest.

Largely due to Bayer’s company patronage, Leverkusen encourage little wider affection among the many ­German soccer public. The plastic tag continues to pursue them. So maybe the best achievement of Alonso’s staff this season has been to provide one thing so incontestably human: so clearly the fruit of actual ingenuity and actual effort, actual ardour and actual ache. Children resembling the superb Florian Wirtz and the irrepressible Victor Boniface have had breakthrough seasons. Relative veterans Robert Andrich, Álex Grimaldo and Granit Xhaka have pushed the outer limits of what even they thought they had been able to. Sixteen completely different gamers have scored a league objective.

Afterwards, soaked in celebratory beer, Alonso warned of the challenges to come back. A Europa League quarter-final to win. A DFB-Pokal closing in opposition to Kaiserslautern subsequent month.

However as dazed followers filed again via the park and the fireworks popped over the chemical manufacturing unit, no person was considering too laborious about any of that. A brand new actuality was taking form, a separation of previous torments and current fantasies, between the Leverkusen that exists now and a Leverkusen that can by no means exist once more.