All the spotlights that illuminated the return of rebel against their historical misfortune. Bayer, never a Bundesliga champion, reached the fourth round of the leading German championship tied on points with the champion of the last 11 years, Bayern. Both will remain there after a draw (2-2) in a duel in which the visitors were twice behind on the scoreboard, which they were able to win and in which they finally scratched a tie in the extension thanks to a penaltito which the Argentine Exequiel Palacios transformed.
In between there was football, a lot of rhythm, talent and daring, which Alonso’s team put above all, who complained at the end that his boys were still in the hotel when the ball was already rolling on the grass. That football failure was penalized by Harry Kane with his fourth goal of the championship in the seventh minute of the match. But after a quarter of an hour the Leverkusen team was already there, bold to go look for the rival, take the ball away and play in their field. Grimaldo tied with a direct free kick that found the corner of the goal defended by the controversial Ulreich. Manuel Neuer saw it from the stands. After almost a year injured by a fracture of the tibia and fibula that occurred while skiing, Bayern reported this week a small muscle ailment to explain the delay in a return that is expected immediately. His team needs a very good version of the meta, who is already on his way to 38 years old.
Grimaldo’s equalizer showed Thomas Tuchel’s nervousness. The Bayern coach earned a warning in a tantrum after the goal in which he protested the calling of the foul, about which there was no doubt. Müller had hit Grimaldo, who took the ball and left an unbeatable business card in his presentation on the big stage of the German championship. The Valencian defender helps Bayer have breadth and depth, values that are gold for a team that plays with three center backs and two full-backs who always start from a height in attack that defines them as wingers. With this scaffolding, Alonso weaves an improved team compared to the one he began to build in October of last year, when he arrived at a destination where the classification placed him in relegation positions. In Germany there is now talk of a candidate to win the Bundesliga because Wirtz has left his injuries behind and is giving candy to a team that has acquired new nuances with the arrival of the expert Xhaka and the struggle of Boniface, a Nigerian striker who is an invitation to believe.
Boniface is 22 years old and in the last two seasons he played in the Norwegian (Bodo-Glimt) and Belgian (Saint-Gilloise) leagues. “Powerful, fast and generous,” Alonso defines him. Leverkusen paid 20 million euros for him this summer and it looks like as soon as he gets his act together he will be able to generate a tasty capital gain. He came from two doubles in the last two days and this time he did not score, but he did not stop creating fires. Bayer controlled the game for quite a few minutes, managed their timing, gave it a rhythm when they found themselves strong and needed to go after Bayern and slowed down to save the ball when they opted to move Tuchel’s team. “We are in a process,” Alonso explained in the final press conference, a final exercise that in the Bundesliga is staged with the two coaches sharing the stage. Alonso also looked there, next to Tuchel, who seemed somewhere between troubled and tormented. The performance of his team was irregular. “It is difficult for us to be compact,” he acknowledged. With a quarter of an hour left, Wirtz shot the post, so in the final summary Thomas Müller was even more specific than his coach: “They deserved the tie.”
Even so, Bayern could have won because Goretzka scored in the 86th minute with a shot on the penalty spot after a maneuver by Tel. “We didn’t defend it well,” Alonso assessed. “But we fought until the end,” he concluded. Until Hofmann forced a dubious penalty in which Antonio Davies risked more than he should in an action in which the Leverkusen forward left the area. Palacios equalized on the hour mark and Bayer celebrated with the ferocity typical of a great feat.
In Paris the problems continue for Luis Enrique, who cannot activate PSG. Nice took the points (2-3) with an outstanding performance by another Nigerian striker, Terem Moffi, scorer of two goals. In the French champion, Kylian Mbappé barely responded, who also scored a double. His last goal came in the final stretch of a match that left Luis Enrique satisfied: “I’m leaving happier than when we beat Lyon. This is the way,” the Asturian coach concluded after his team’s first defeat in the French championship. PSG has eight points after five days and on Tuesday they will have to clear up doubts against Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League opener, which a day later will bring Bayern a major duel against Manchester United in Munich.
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