Through the storm

For the first time this Bun­des­li­ga sea­son, VfB mana­ges a clean sheet—against none other than the dou­ble title-win­ner from Lever­ku­sen. Unli­ke in Munich, howe­ver, the team doesn’t buck­le under the opponent’s offen­si­ve pres­su­re after the break.

Last sea­son, the matches bet­ween the even­tu­al cham­pi­on and run­ner-up were wide­ly regard­ed as the best that Ger­man soc­cer had to offer at the time. Both teams faced off on an equal foo­ting, with VfB gene­ral­ly leading—someone recent­ly cal­cu­la­ted they led in all but eight minutes—but after 90 minu­tes, a win­ner only emer­ged in the Cup. Many of the­se series con­tin­ued even after the Fri­day night match, except for the noti­on that the teams still play­ed on equal terms.

Becau­se, befo­re the break, the play­ers in the Stutt­gart jer­seys were com­ple­te­ly over­whel­med by Leverkusen’s high-pres­sing attack. Up front, they didn’t mana­ge a sin­gle shot toward the goal, and at the back, the­re was a suc­ces­si­on of hair-rai­sing mis­pla­ced pas­ses, lost tack­les, and despe­ra­te sprints back to their own goal line to pre­vent what see­med like the ine­vi­ta­ble: a Lever­ku­sen lead. Ulti­m­ate­ly, it was most­ly thanks to one man, the bril­li­ant­ly in-form Alex­an­der Nübel, who once again show­ed why he’s on Juli­an Nagelsmann’s radar and in Bayern’s ros­t­er plans.

Lessons from Munich

This game quick­ly brought back memo­ries of the 4–0 loss in Munich in mid-Octo­ber, when VfB also strug­g­led to gain a foot­hold and even­tual­ly couldn’t hold off the opponent’s offen­si­ve fire­power. Not so in this match. Even wit­hout defen­si­ve lea­der Cha­b­ot, the team dug in more and more after halft­i­me, and Chabot’s repla­ce­ment, Cha­se, whom I would have sub­bed out at halft­i­me, grew into the game. In the end, the point may have been some­what for­t­u­na­te but was also hard-fought.

During the break, the team and its coach mana­ged to regroup and gra­du­al­ly ste­al Leverkusen’s thun­der. While the first win against Lever­ku­sen sin­ce 2018 see­med far­ther away than in any of their recent matchups, as the game pro­gres­sed, VfB gai­ned more pos­ses­si­on and more con­trol in the opponent’s half. May­be this was becau­se Lever­ku­sen held back, hoping to lure VfB out of their defen­si­ve shell, or per­haps becau­se Lever­ku­sen, after all, isn’t Bay­ern Munich this sea­son.

Surviving the Loss of Control

In any case, after a string of con­trol­led per­for­man­ces, VfB had a bad day, strugg­ling to reach their per­for­mance limits. This hap­pen­ed last sea­son and will likely occur a few times again in this much toug­her sea­son. That’s why it’s so important that VfB wea­the­red the storm and left the field uns­ca­thed. Just like the neces­sa­ry wins against Kiel and Kai­sers­lau­tern, this can only boost the team’s con­fi­dence, even though they’ll need to keep working on fin­ding their foo­ting against aggres­si­ve, high-skil­led oppon­ents.

Wrap­ping up this series of games bet­ween the inter­na­tio­nal breaks, Ber­ga­mo and Frank­furt now come to the Neckarstadion—a tough test for the home record that’s been unde­fea­ted for over a year. After that, the­re will be some­what smal­ler chal­lenges in both the Cham­pi­ons League and the league. Then may­be VfB can spark a bit of a storm of their own.

Pic­tu­re: © Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images