Leverkusen's exceptional 2024

"We overcame a lot of difficult situations and kept believing right to the end in every game," said sporting director Simon Rolfes at Germany's Sports Personality of the Year awards in mid-December. "The team thrilled lots of people across the whole of Germany with their spirit. We are very proud of that."

In fact, the glitzy ceremony organised by a leading German TV channel was one of the very rare occasions Leverkusen came second in 2024, missing out on the Team of the Year prize to the women's 3x3 basketball team that took gold at the Paris Olympics. But across German and European football, the year has been about just one team.

Watch: Xabi Alonso's winning blend

The start: There's still a title race

“The winter break was good for us, enjoying a breather with our families. But now we’re glad to get going again," said Xabi Alonso before the Matchday 17 game with Augsburg that brought Die Werkself back into Bundesliga action on 13 January 2024.

Despite having gone through the first half of the season with 13 wins and three draws from their 16 matches, they still had just a four-point cushion over second-placed Bayern Munich, who had a game in hand.

With their Matchday 19 goalless draw with Rhine derby rivals Borussia Mönchengladbach, that gap was down to just two points coming into the Matchday 21 encounter with their closest challengers at the BayArena.

The big win: Bayern are beaten

The date 10 February 2024 is one - and a game - that Leverkusen fans will remember forever. 

The pair had met on Matchday 4 and only Exequiel Palacios' penalty four minutes into added time at the Allianz Arena had preserved Leverkusen's unbeaten start. So early in the season, no one would have predicted that Alonso's side would still be unbeaten when they met again. And surely - the doubters said - reigning Bundesliga champions Bayern would this time reassert what had been the "natural order" of things in the German top flight.

Watch: Leverkusen 3-0 Bayern Munich

"Thirty teams have tried and 30 teams have failed," said then-Bayern boss Thomas Tuchel. "It's the moment to lay your cards on the table."

For the first time in Bundesliga history, two teams arrived at kick-off on Matchday 20 with at least 50 points, but when Tuchel played his hand Alonso trumped them all. Spectacularly so.

"This means that the team has a great energy. We work together every day really hard," said Alonso after seeing on-loan Bayern man Josip Stanišić, Alejandro Grimaldo and Jeremie Frimpong score the goals to send his team five points clear at the top of the table and make a deafening statement of intent.

"We were on the gas, focused and aggressive from the first minute to the last," was how midfielder Robert Andrich explained his team's win. Bayern legend Thomas Müller said "it was an absolutely deseved win". That says it all.

The title win: "Neverkusen" no more

"I still need a little time to get my head around what we have really achieved," said Florian Wirtz after hitting a hat-trick in the 5-0 win over Werder Bremen on Matchday 29 that wrapped up the club's first Bundesliga title with five games to go. "You can't imagine something like this ahead of time, especially when you see what happened in the Bundesliga in previous years. At some point you think there could be more [twists] to come." 

Not this time, no, Florian. For the first time since Borussia Dortmund in 2011/12, there was another name other than "FC Bayern München" on the Meisterschale.

Watch: Leverkusen wrap up the title in style

"When you win the championship, that's something special," said Alonso after the first major honour of his coaching career in his first full season at the club. "The team has won it for the first time in Leverkusen's history: you have to enjoy that. You have to celebrate with the fans, the families. It's an honour to work for this club."

Alonso's side would end up 17 points clear of runners-up Stuttgart after recording 28 wins and six draws to become the first Bundesliga side to go through an entire campaign unbeaten. There were some close-run things, notably against Dortmund on Matchday 30 and again the following week against Stuttgart, but they kept then run going, even setting a new European record 51 matches without defeat.

“It is an exceptional season, not only in Germany but in Europe,” Alonso said amid the celebrations following the 2-1 win over Augsburg on Matchday 34 of the most incredible and only "invincible" Bundesliga season ever. “We deserve now to be part of that history of European football. In 20 years we will look back and we will say ‘We did that.’"

The end of the run: Leipzig finally find a way

Leverkusen won the DFB Cup too, but did not quite manage to go all 53 competitive fixtures of 2023/24 without defeat, losing to Atalanta in the UEFA Europa League final to blot - but only barely - an otherwise pristine copybook. "Could they do it again?" was the question before the 2024/25 campaign got underway. By Matchday 2, we already knew the answer.

"It's an incredible feeling to win here in Leverkusen," said Loïs Openda after scoring twice to bring RB Leipzig back from 2-0 down to triumph 3-2 at the home of the champions.

Openda and other opponents must have forgotten what that feeling was like after 43 domestic games without managing to overcome Die Werkself since Bochum's 3-0 victory on 27 May 2023, the final day of the 2022/23 campaign.

"We take positives and negatives from this game," said Alonso. "We'll learn from these mistakes. It's not good to allow your opponent to come back from 2-0 down. But it's a process, it's still early in the season."

End of the year: Freiburg to finish

With one game left in 2024, Alonso has - again - been proven right as his team find themselves in second place, four points behind leaders Bayern in a reversal of their positions 12 months ago.

A run of just one win in a six-game unbeaten run between Matchdays 5 and 10 meant the champions' title defence stalled. But four successive wins since thanks in large part to Wirtz's sensational form - and Bayern's stumbling run in recent matchdays - means Alonso's team are well within striking distance of Vincent Kompany's league leaders as an exceptional 12 months comes to a close.

Watch: Leverkusen right back in the title hunt

"We definitely wanted to write a chapter in the history of the club – and we succeeded in doing that!," said Jonas Hofmann at the Sports Personality of the Year event. "Last season was exceptional and we went beyond our limits as a team as did everybody else throughout the club. A lot is possible in sport if everybody sticks together – we saw that this season in the cup game in Munich. We are going to try to achieve big things again this year. We're working hard on that."