Xabi Alonso's Bayer Leverkusen flies with the inertia of champions and wins even the games they seem to have lost.
After Thursday's agonizing comeback against Qarabag (from 0-2 to 3-2 in the last 20 minutes), the Germans remain the only team in Europe undefeated this season.
In addition to having advanced in the European competition, where they will face West Ham in the quarterfinals, they are leaders of the Bundesliga with ten points ahead of the
almighty
Bayern Munich and are in the semifinals of the German Cup.
The 106 goals scored in all competitions attract praise for their choral and cheerful play;
But there is one aspect that stands out when explaining his performance: the tactical expertise of the Tolosa coach to enhance his wingers.
Alejandro Grimaldo (Valencia, 28 years old) and Jeremie Frimpong (Amsterdam, 23 years old) have scored 46 goals (22 goals and 24 assists) between them, unprecedented figures for players in their position.
Although the arrival of the Guipuzcoan coach drastically changed the team last year, it was difficult to predict that Leverkusen would be in a position to have what may be the best season in its history.
With the injury suffered in January by the team's main scorer, Víctor Boniface (16 goals and 9 assists in the season), it was expected that Bayer would have reduced his performance, but Alonso's tactical ability has allowed him to replace the Nigerian's goals. in an unusual way: turning his wingers into his main offensive argument.
Only Boniface himself, with 16 goals, has scored more than Grimaldo and Frimpong (11 each).
In the five major European leagues there is no full-back that comes close to the numbers of this society.
The 25 goals generated by Grimaldo (11 goals and 14 assists) make him the most influential winger in Europe, followed by the 21 of his teammate Frimpong (11 goals and 10 assists).
With 14, the next on the list is RB Leipzig left-back David Raum (3 goals and 11 assists), above the 13 of Interista Federico Dimarco (5 goals and 8 assists).
In the Spanish League, Dani Carvajal (Real Madrid) has 9 goals generated with 5 goals and 4 assists.
And diving into history, the figures also surpass the best figures of Dani Alves (4 goals and 21 assists in the 2010/11 season) or Roberto Carlos (8 goals and 13 assists in the 1999/00).
The 46 goals generated by the duo formed by Grimaldo and Frimpong make them an unprecedented pairing of wingers.
Although there are still months to go, they have already far surpassed the most productive season of Liverpool's full-back pairing of Trent Alexander Arnold and Andrew Robertson, who managed 31 goals generated (6 goals and 25 assists) in 2019/20.
They also surpass the 30 generated by Daniel Alves and Maxwell (Barcelona) in 2010/11 or the 28 of the Madrid duo formed by Marcelo and Dani Carvajal in 2016/17.
Bundesliga commentator on Movistar+ since 2010 and German football expert, Miguel Gutiérrez, highlights the coach's connection with his players as the key to this performance.
“Bayern has won eleven consecutive Bundesliga titles and has better players, but the locker room is chaos and it shows.”
Although their production figures are similar, the truth is that Grimaldo and Frimpong are very different footballers.
Grimaldo (11 goals and 14 assists) appears in more interior areas and stands out for his good technical quality, his capacity for association in the interior areas, his good finishing and his hitting from set pieces;
while Frimpong (11 goals and 10 assists) lives more on his physicality — he is the fastest right back in the Bundesliga (35.96 km / h) — and on his ability to arrive by surprise.
However, Gutiérrez remembers that his good individual figures cannot be understood without the collective gear.
“We must not lose sight of the work of players like Florian Wirtz, who is key when it comes to associating with the full-backs and the team's top assistant (with 17 assists on goals).”
Regarding Grimaldo, acquired for free last summer after having found football maturity at Benfica, Gutiérrez points out that the presence of several Spaniards on the
staff
has helped him land on his feet in the locker room in his first season.
“He is a different player than usual in Germany.
Here the players are physical but somewhat rough with the ball, and in their case, you can see his training at La Masia.
Although his adaptation to German football has been perfect, I think that, if he had been able to return to Barça as Jordi Alba's successor, he would have been a great signing.”
The Valencian, who was already called up by the National Team last November, was called up again on Friday by Luis de la Fuente for the two friendlies that Spain will play against Colombia and Brazil in the coming days, and his season makes him a serious candidate for the Eurocup.
But while the full-backs and the coach get all the headlines, Gutiérrez points to the box of the humble BayArena (with a capacity of 30,000 spectators) to explain the secret of the team's good work.
“There is no talk about him, but the true architect of Leverkusen's success lies in the Barcelona native Fernando Carro, CEO of the club since 2019. He brought in Xabi Alonso and changed the mentality: from settling for being third or fourth, to launching into trying win the first league in its history.
He doesn't score goals, but he is a visionary.”
In recent seasons, they have been able to reinvest very well the money received from sales of players such as Kai Havertz, Moussa Diaby, Leon Bailey and Bern Leno and mix the youth of youth players such as Florien Wirtz with strategic signings such as Grimaldo, Granit Xhaka or Boniface.
The greatest achievement in the club's history was the UEFA Cup they won against Espanyol in 1988. Leverkusen, although historic, earned the nickname Neverkusen
for
the fateful outcome of the 2001/02 season, in which players like Michael Ballack, Dimitar Berbatov and Lúcio lost the Champions League finals (against Real Madrid) and the Cup, in addition to the league title on the last day.
The two extreme comebacks against Qarabag in their Europa League tie (they tied and came back in both games in the last minute after being 0-2 down in both) show that something has changed at Bayer.
With nine games left, the Germans have the opportunity of a century to win the first Bundesliga in their history.
The goal that forever buries the stigma of
a failed team
will almost certainly come from the wings.
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