Can Giant Killer Bayer Leverkusen Defend Their Bundesliga Crown?

The 2024-25 season is set to start from August 26 as defending champions Bayer Leverkusen will take on Borussia Mönchengladbach in the opening match.

Defending Champions Bayer Leverkusen On Big Mission

One of the biggest talking points of the season has been whether Bayer Leverkusen would be able to defend their Bundesliga title. The underdogs stunned 33-times title winning champions Bayern Munich last year. Not only this, Leverkusen ended the title winning streak of Bayern Munich who won eleven times consecutively from 2013 to 2023.

Not only did they win their first Bundesliga title, they did so going undefeated in the entire tournament. This is a feat which no other football club in the German league has achieved, not even the giant Bayern Munich. For the previous reason Leverkusen lost just one of the 53 matches they played across all competitions.

The Xhaka Factor

Bayer Leverkusen talisman Granit Xhaka has called on his teammates to challenge for the Bundesliga title again ahead of the new campaign after last season’s surprise triumph. Eyebrows were raised when Xhaka arrived from Premier League runners-up Arsenal at the start of last term, with Leverkusen coming off a fifth-placed finish and with rookie coach Xabi Alonso preparing for his first full season as a first-team head coach. But a club who had never previously won the Bundesliga did so undefeated, something no German football club, not even Bayern Munich, had ever done, adding the German Cup and losing just one of 53 matches in all competitions.

Speaking with AFP at the club’s pre-season training camp in the picturesque village of Donaueschingen, where Euro 2024 winners Spain were based, Xhaka said last season was just the beginning for Leverkusen.

“We know people are hoping to beat us, they will try and they will do everything,” he said. “But we still have the hunger to be where we were last season, he added”.

While much of the criticism can be chalked up to frustrations from a success-starved fanbase, he said it has been instrumental in his rebirth at Leverkusen.

“I’m a fan of criticism because criticism makes you stronger. This is what I believe. I don’t drop my head, but I look at what they are criticizing, and maybe I need to do something more, or change some things. I believe every player needs to go through criticism… You need to be strong in your head, and to believe and trust yourself that you can still do it,” he said.

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Xhaka joined Arsenal from Borussia Moenchengladbach in 2016. He played 297 times for the Gunners but often came under fire from fans, sometimes for being too emotional on the pitch.

When Leverkusen played a pre-season friendly in north London in August, Xhaka returned as something the club treasures deeply, an ‘invincible’.

Similar to Arsenal in its unbeaten Premier League campaign in 2003-04, Leverkusen finished the Bundesliga with 90 points last season, playing four fewer matches.