Arsenal fans will always tell you that their 2003-04 season was the greatest in Premier League history – if not the best ever in European football. That team, one of Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp, Patrick Vieira, Sol Campbell and more, went 38 games of a Premier League season without losing. And although critics can point to the glut of draws Arsene Wenger’s side ground out, there is no discounting just how remarkable that achievement was.
That was the last time a team in one of Europe’s top-five leagues went undefeated across the course of a league season. It is still spoken about today, golden commemorative trophy and all. Unfortunately for the Gunners, though, a better, more impressive campaign is coming to a close – this time on the continent.
Xabi Alonso’s Bayer Leverkusen are two wins away from completing a remarkable invincible season. They have already won the Bundesliga by 17 points, and did so without being beaten. Come out on top in their last two fixtures of the campaign – the Europa League and DFB-Pokal finals – and they will have complete a remarkable treble.
Given the context, the budget, the manager and the landscape of both German and European football, Leverkusen’s season should be regarded as being better than all of those great campaigns to come before them. Forget Arsenal 2003-04, or Barcelona 2008-09, or Manchester United 1998-99, or Inter 2009-10 or Manchester City 2022-23. This season, one that is on the cusp of going 53 games unbeaten, would be the greatest in modern football history.
Rising from the bottom
Context is crucial here, when assessing Leverkusen’s season against those aforementioned. Although the campaign technically started in August 2023, the roots of this success span further back. Alonso took over at the BayArena on October 5, 2022, with the sleeping giants second-bottom of the Bundesliga table, losers of seven of their first eight games, and enduring their worst start to a league campaign since 1979.
In their desperation, Leverkusen turned to a coach whose only previous managerial job had been in charge of Real Sociedad’s B team – albeit he had guided them to promotion into the Spanish second division for the first time in their history.
It all looked a bit bleak. Wonderkid Florian Wirtz was still working his way back from a serious knee injury, while the leaky defence was bleeding goals against pretty much everyone. Alonso, however, changed things.
He revamped the tactical system, and buoyed by the return of Wirtz in January 2023, pieced together an excellent second half of the season. Leverkusen beat Bayern in the Bundesliga, reached the Europa League semi-finals, and snuck back into Europe via a sixth-placed finish. The signs were there that things were moving in the right direction – but no one foresaw what would come next.
Tight budget
Over the summer, Leverkusen managed to hang on to Wirtz – who was constantly linked with the likes of Bayern during the off-season – but they did lose Moussa Diaby, arguably their most effective player from towards the end of the 2022-23 campaign, to Aston Villa.
Alonso, meanwhile, wasn’t handed much to rebuild with. Still, he worked wonderfully within the constrains of his budget. Leverkusen’s marquee signing was Granit Xhaka, signed from Arsenal for €25 million (£21.5m/$27.3m), while little-known forwards Victor Boniface and Nathan Tella arrived alongside Bayern Munich loanee Josip Stanisic.
But the two best moves of Leverkusen’s summer were undoubtedly those of Alex Grimaldo and Jonas Hoffman, who have both become key players for the German champions having arrived on free transfers from Benfica and Borussia Monchengladbach, respectively. Pieced together, Leverkusen spent €90m (£77m/$97m) on new players, but after losing Diaby, their net spent amounted to just €20m (£17m/$21m).
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Strong start
Leverkusen started the season well, winning 11 of their first 12 fixtures. This was a tight defensive unit who were devastating on the break. The first real statement of intent came on September 15, when theysnatched a point from Bayern Munich at the Allianz Arena, though they really should have won at the home of the defending champions.
They made light work of the Europa League, too, winning each of their six group games while scoring 19 goals and conceding just three. And while teams elsewhere – notably Bayern – crashed out of the German Cup, Leverkusen stayed alive, putting eight past Teutonia Ottensen, five past Sandhausen and three past SC Paderborn.
By Christmas, Leverkusen were top of the table, were comfortably into the knockout stages of the Europa League, and set to play Stuttgart in the quarter-finals of the Pokal. Their 24-game unbeaten run in all competitions to start the campaign equalled a record set by Hamburg in 1982.
Bundesliga glory
There was reason to believe, though, that this run would soon end. Leverkusen, after all, were a side built on a small budget, led by a manager who hadn’t yet coached a full season of top-flight football. Detractors were starting to pick holes in them, too. A couple of draws in early December showed that Leverkusen could at least be contained, while a simple Europa League slate was hardly a test of their credentials.
Still, Leverkusen kept picking up points. Augsburg, RB Leipzig and Darmstadt were all comfortably dispatched after the winter break. And then, on February 10, the reason for real hope was clear. Leverkusen were admittedly favourites to beat an out-of-form Bayern side at home, but the manner in which they did was remarkable. Alonso pieced together a masterful tactical plan, and Leverkusen battered the reigning champions 3-0.
The manager, a markedly cool figure, kept calm. “It was a very important win but it is just three points,” said Alonso after the game. “We have to keep going. It is still February and we need to remain calm.”
And keep going they did. Leverkusen had the title – the first in their history – wrapped up by March, and clinched it officially in mid-April. The dominance of this side couldn’t be understated.
Late, late drama
While Leverkusen stand on the precipice of immortality, they have not had things all their own way. In fact, they have begun to grow a reputation for scoring late goals that have preserved their unbeaten status throughout the campaign.
The first such instance came just four weeks into the season when Exequiel Palacios buried a 94th-minute penalty to snatch a 2-2 draw with Bayern. But it was not until the turn of the year that Leverkusen’s stoppage-time shows became notorious.
Jonathan Tah bagged a 90th-minute winner to down Stuttgart in the DFB-Pokal in early February, while Patrick Schick scored twice in added-time to bounce Qarabag from the Europa League, 5-4 on aggregate. He also netted a 91st-minute winner against Hoffenheim in a game that Leverkusen were trailing in with just three minutes left on the clock.
Even since wrapping up the Bundesliga title, Leverkusen’s drive to retain their unbeaten record has meant they have kept going right until the very end of games. Stanisic buried a 97th-minte equaliser against Borussia Dortmund on April 21, while Robert Andrich did the same against Stuttgart six days later.
Back in Europe, after Jeremie Frimpong’s 89th-minute equaliser preserved their invincibility in the quarter-final second leg against West Ham, it looked as if Leverkusen’s luck had finally run out when they found themselves 2-0 down to Roma in the second leg of their semi-final as the game entered its final 10 minutes. However, a Gianluca Mancini own goal put the German side back ahead on aggregate, and though they were now destined for the final, that did not stop them from going in search of an equaliser on the night, which Stanisic eventually provided seven minutes into stoppage-time.
Gretest ever?
And so the question of greatness comes into play. There are any number of teams here who could feel entitled to the admittedly arbitrary honour of ‘best club season in modern history’ The invincibles of Arsenal are certainly one, while Pep Guardiola’s treble-winning 2008-09 Barcelona and 2022-23 Man City teams have a claim. Ask a Manchester United fan and you would come away with a decent argument for their famous 1999-2000 side, too, while Jose Mourinho will tell you his treble-winning Inter team of 2009-10 brought with them an underdog spirit similar to that of this Leverkusen side.
Four of those five teams won the Champions League, while the other pieced together a record in the English top flight that is yet to be beaten. Leverkusen, meanwhile, weren’t able to win the Champions League this season, but if they had qualified, who’s to say they wouldn’t have dominated there too? If the fifth-placed team in the Bundesliga, Borussia Dortmund, could reach the final, why couldn’t the eventual champions have done so?
Some of the individual names in those teams far eclipse anything that Alonso has at his disposal, either. Alonso does not have a Lionel Messi or Erling Haaland to produce a moment of goal-scoring magic. He doesn’t have the defensive veterans that underpinned Mourinho’s Inter, or the midfield solidity of Roy Keane and Paul Scholes. Instead, this is a cohesive side, pieced together perfectly, and crafted with far inferior financial power to its main rivals by a coach who is 18 months into his top-flight career.
Unlike those mentioned, this is a club with almost no history of winning trophies – hence the now defunct ‘Neverkusen’ nickname – who play in a league that boasted 11-time defending champions heading into 2023-24. Potentially winning the Europa League or DFB-Pokal might have been deemed possible, but winning both and the league title, all while not losing a single game would be a remarkable achievement that surpasses anything from at least the last 50 years of the game.
To do so, they must beat Atalanta in Dublin on Wednesday, and then follow that up by taking down second-tier Kaiserslauten in the Pokal final on Saturday. They may well leave it late, but few would bet against Leverkusen getting the job done.
