The semi-finals of the Europa League, the second most important European men’s football competition, begin on Thursday evening. There are two Italian teams still in the running: Atalanta, who will play the first leg in France, against Marseille, and Roma, who will face Bayer Leverkusen at home in the Olympic Stadium, who recently won the German championship for first time in its history. Facing Bayer Leverkusen this year was a big problem for anyone, and it will be for Roma too, for a very concrete reason: they haven’t lost a match yet this season. Up to this moment he has played 46 in the championship, Europa League and German Cup, winning 38 and drawing 8. From 2000 onwards no one had ever achieved this in the main European championships: previously, in 2011-2012 Juventus coached by Antonio Conte had gone 43 consecutive games without ever losing.
Historically, Bayer Leverkusen has never been a winning team and indeed, since in 2002 it quite sensationally lost the championship on the last day and the finals of the Champions League and German Cup in just a few days, it began to be derided with the nickname “Bayer Neverkusen” (a play on words with neverwhich in English means “never”, to say that he would not have never won major trophies). Since the arrival of the 42-year-old Spanish coach Xabi Alonso last season, this rhetoric has disappeared. Bayer Leverkusen has become an exciting team, playing modern, spectacular football and admired throughout the world as an example. Above all, for a few months he has been demonstrating an exceptional ability to never lose matches, one way or another.
There is one fact that explains this peculiarity of Leverkusen’s season well: so far they have scored 15 goals in injury time of the second half, the last of a match. If you also count the goals scored after the 87th minute, the total comes to 21 in 46 games. Obviously the fact that Leverkusen have scored a lot of goals in general this season (127, therefore 2.76 on average per game) has increased the possibility that some of these arrived in the final minutes, as has their particularly intense way of playing at all moments of the matches. 15 goals after the ninetieth, however, are something singular even for great teams, and for Leverkusen indicative of the mentality and awareness that the team has developed.
The victory in the Bundesliga (the German championship) was exceptional not only because it was the first time for Bayer Leverkusen, but also because the same team, Bayern Munich, had always won for eleven years in Germany. To complete the “perfect season”, i.e. without defeats, Leverkusen would have to not lose for another seven games: three league games, the German Cup final against Kaiserslautern and then the Europa League semi-finals against Roma and the eventual final , which will be played on May 22 in Dublin, Ireland.
Since arithmetically winning the title with five matchdays to spare, Leverkusen have played two league matches. Both were useless for the league table, because the final victory was not in question, and moreover against two strong opponents: Borussia Dortmund, fifth in the table and Champions League semi-finalist, and Stuttgart, currently third. Despite this, Bayer Leverkusen again managed not to lose, drawing in the 97th minute against Dortmund and in the 96th minute against Stuttgart (a match in which they lost 2-0 and in which Stuttgart missed the 3rd goal on at least two occasions -0).
In the Europa League, after having dominated the group with six wins out of six and 19 goals scored, in the round of 16 Bayer Leverkusen played against the Azerbaijani side Qarabağ, a team considered much less strong than the German team. In the first leg, in Azerbaijan, Leverkusen had come back from a two-goal deficit to score the 2-2 in the 92nd minute through Patrik Schick, a forward from the Czech Republic who played for Roma between 2017 and 2019. In those years, Schick showed have talent, but he almost always played below expectations and many said that he lacked “character”, that is, the ability to be incisive in decisive moments and to play well even under pressure. In this year’s Bayer Leverkusen, Schick has instead become a player who often settles the game in the final minutes.
The return match against Qarabağ was even more exceptional than the first leg. Even then, the Azerbaijani team went ahead by two goals. In the 72nd minute Dutch full-back Jeremie Frimpong scored the goal to make it 1-2, but in the 90th minute Qarabağ was still ahead and with that result Bayer Leverkusen would have been eliminated from the Europa League. Between the 93rd and 97th, however, Schick scored twice, allowing Bayer to win 3-2 and qualify for the quarter-finals (where they then eliminated West Ham).
In short, it will be really difficult for Roma to overcome Bayer Leverkusen in the double match (the return will be played in Germany on 9 May). However, Roma, like Bayer Leverkusen did last year by taking Xabi Alonso, has become a different team since it was coached by Daniele De Rossi, that is, since last January.
In recent months De Rossi has changed Roma’s game a lot, making it more offensive and contemporary, and has put his players in a position to perform at their best. Since his arrival, Roma have gone from ninth to fifth place in Serie A, while in the Europa League they eliminated first the Dutch Feyenoord, winning on penalties, then the English Brighton, thanks above all to the great match played at home (won 4-0), and finally Milan, beaten somewhat surprisingly both at San Siro and at the Olimpico with very convincing performances.
