It is hard to believe that a mere 16 months ago, as they celebrated an unprecedented, unbeaten domestic double-winning season with their awestruck fans at the BayArena, Bayer Leverkusen resembled the very picture of stability, health and continuity.
It seemed as though Die Werkself were set to maintain their soaring productivity levels, with Xabi Alonso working his coaching magic and having rebuffed his former clubs, Bayern Munich and Liverpool, as they searched for new managers. Sporting director Simon Rolfes and director of football Kim Falkenberg appeared on top of the world on the planning fronts, and there was no sense at all that a big Umbruch (upheaval) was coming.
Now, as Leverkusen prepare to face Eintracht Frankfurt on Friday (2:30 p.m. ET, ESPN+), it is almost impossible to relate to that previous sense of internal calm and confidence.
Leverkusen are unrecognizable from the squad that won the Meisterschale, lifted the Pott in such style, and came within a whisker of taking the Europa League crown. So much for romantic spring 2024 notions of formally renaming the part of the Bismarckstrasse, the street that houses the BayArena, the Xabi Alonso-Allee in honor of the club’s most successful manager. In the here and now, Leverkusen are a team in search of an identity again after an XXL-Umbruch (radical change of a massive scale) with a whopping 17 players out and 21 in.
The decision to dispense with the services of coach Erik ten Hag just two Bundesliga matches into the current season might strike you as overly harsh and panicky. The other perspective is that Rolfes and CEO Fernando Carro recognized that they had made a grave mistake in believing the spiky Dutchman would passen (fit). The passen concept is one that underpins appointments in Germany. Unlike in England, where it’s often about recruiting the biggest available name, a coach has to match a German club’s philosophy, style and personality.
It became clear early on that Ten Hag did not have the players behind him and the warning signs were there as early as in the 5-1 thrashing by Flamengo‘s under-20s on the club’s Brazil tour. The lights flashed even more forebodingly in the high-profile 2-0 friendly loss away to Chelsea.
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I confess I was quite alarmed by the non-performances I witnessed while commentating on the first two official matches of Ten Hag’s record short tenure for the world TV feed. First there was a storm-interrupted DFB-Pokal match against fourth-tier Sonnenhof Grossaspach that perhaps portended the Unwetter (extreme weather) still to arrive for Die Werkself.
If you look just at the 4-0 scoreline, you might not see what the fuss was all about. But Leverkusen struggled to hit high notes of any description and ran away with it only near the end, when their limited but enthusiastic opponents found themselves down to nine players. Patrik Schick was even called upon to make a deft goal-line clearance to preserve a paltry half-time advantage.
A first-round cup tie away from home at a small venue on the hinterlands often involves dusting off significant summer cobwebs. You would hope for an improvement come matchday 1 in the Bundesliga, especially at home and with a high-profile new coach. But against Hoffenheim, Leverkusen were flat and floundering without verve of imagination. No one could say the 2-1 win for the more efficient visitors was undeserved. There was no sense that we were watching the start of an exciting new era.
Again, it was tempting to think it was too early to make a proper judgement. After all, what team in the world would easily rebound from losing the spine of a successful team? Florian Wirtz, Granit Xhaka, Jeremie Frimpong, Jonathan Tah and longtime captain Lukas Hradecky were gone. Yet it didn’t take long for the mood in a disconsolate camp to become public, and things only worsened after a sloppy 3-3 draw with Werder Bremen.
It was on Sept. 1 that Leverkusen’s decision-makers, armed with the knowledge their own eyes and ears were providing, decided to sack Ten Hag. Though it might have looked surprising to most, everyone who covers German football saw it as inevitable.
Carro told me in the past that he and Rolfes speak weekly, even in good times, about successors to the incumbent manager. This was true even when Alonso was coach, knowing full well that this sport is unpredictable and you should always have a ready-to-go list in front of you.
That Kasper Hjulmand found himself on top of that list was a surprise, but there is a certain logic to the appointment. He has demonstrated his ability to grow, having impressed earlier in his career with FC Nordsjaelland only to hit the rocks with Mainz in the Bundesliga. We all admired what he achieved with Denmark four years ago at the Euros. He was tactically savvy with smart pressing and counter-pressing, and on a human level, he aptly handled the management and leadership demands required after Christian Eriksen‘s cardiac arrest on the pitch against Finland.
Hjulmand offers a pragmatic solution after the more idealistic Ten Hag’s failure and Alonso’s elegant, eye-catching football with a different cast of starring characters. Flexibility is the new watch word. By retaining assistant coach Rogier Meijer, who was brought in by Ten Hag and whose methods have won the favor of players, and promoting Sergi Runge from within, Hjulmand has already shown his maturity and lack of ego. It won’t be his way or the high way, and that is correct. As Kicker reporter Matthias Dersch said earlier in the week, there is a Sozialkundelehrer (social studies teacher) vibe about the Dane, one that actually might serve the club well in these back-to-basics, more boring times.
The interesting thing is that the new-look Bayer 04 squad has the potential to be extremely strong, but it might take a while for it all to come together. Certainly it would be an optimistic Leverkusen fan indeed who would predict a victory on Friday against Eintracht Frankfurt. They have similarly lost big-name players in the past year — Omar Marmoush and Hugo Ekitike — but with Markus Krösche at the sporting helm, they are proving to be masters at constantly replacing and rebuilding.
Leverkusen’s summer of change was always likely to cause pain. But in the city where advances with the aspirin tablet were made, Hjulmand might be precisely the man to make the headaches of the past few weeks diminish as they carve out a new persona.
