Bayer Leverkusen
June 14, 2009
If Bayer Leverkusen's 2008-09 season were a horse race, it would have gone like this: a hotly tipped but unproven young stallion comes flying out of the starting gates -- only to run out of breath heading into the final turn and limp across the finish line in the middle of the pack.
Leverkusen led the league last autumn but ended up all the way down in ninth. It was the second successive year that the team, well stocked with talent and financially backed by one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, failed to qualify for European competition.
Viewed from a long-term perspective, the club's fall is even more precipitous. From 1996-2002, the "factory 11," as the team is known, finished no worse than fourth in the league and came close to winning the Champions League. In the past five seasons, the best Leverkusen have been able to do is fifth.
Last week, the club appointed veteran coach Jupp Heynckes to replace Bruno Labbadia, who bolted to Hamburg after just one season.
Heynckes' task -- obviously -- is to reverse Leverkusen's downward spiral. But to do that, he'll have to address not just the shortcomings within current squad, but some systemic problems within the club itself.
The big man in the middle
Excuses abound for Leverkusen's inability to come up with the goods when it counts. In a recent interview with DW-TV, for instance, technical director Rudi Voeller cited the fact that, due to stadium renovations, the team had to play all its home matches in 2009 in Dusseldorf.
But that's no explanation for declining form over the course of the past five seasons. Indeed, 2004 seems to mark a caesura in which a budding powerhouse suddenly morphed into one of the league's most dependable disappointments.
The architect of Leverkusen's run at the top was former manager Rainer Calmund. The portly, larger-than-life figure was quick to realize the value of footballers from the former East Germany, acquiring stars like Ulf Kirsten, Bernd Schneider and Michael Ballack.
He also built up a productive pipeline with Brazil that saw selecao players Lucio, Ze Roberto and Emerson join the factory 11.
Calmund's judgement was equally good when it came to coaches. The hyperactive but tactically astute Christoph Daum made an immediate impact when he took over in 1996 and nearly won a Bundesliga title, before revelations about his cocaine use led to his dismissal in 2000.
Daum's replacement, Klaus Toppmoeller, continued the attacking style for which Leverkusen had by then become known, taking the team to the Champions League and German Cup finals in 2002 and nearly winning the league to boot.
Calmund was fired in 2004 amidst a controversy about payments to an agent and replaced by Wolfgang Holzhaeuser. Voeller was hired in 2005 to direct the sporting side of things. But as far as results on the pitch are concerned, the two have not been able to follow in the big man's giant footsteps.
Management issues
Holzhaeuser is more of a businessman than a football expert, while Voeller, whose tirade at a TV sports reporter while German national team coach in 2003 has become a five-star youtube classic, has never managed to duplicate Calmund's success.
Leverkusen continues to attract talents coveted thoughout the league -- striker Patrick Helmes, midfielder Renato Augusto and keeper Rene Adler top the list. But the East-Germany-meets-Brazil core engineered by Calmund is a thing of the past.
Moreover, Topmoeller's successors -- Klaus Augenthaler, Michael Skibbe and Labbadia -- were all familiar names, but management never gave the impression that the club was willing to back them through lean times in the interest of long-term development.
Those two factors combine to produce performances like the one Leverkusen turned in at this year's German Cup final. During that match, Bayer still displayed vestiges of its attacking style of yore but failed to press forward as a team with any conviction.
The result was a 1-0 loss to a vulnerable and aging Werder Bremen side -- and another missed opportunity to secure some silverware.
Jupp's conundrum
Heyncke's challenge will be to knit this squad back together and restore the faith of Leverkusen's key players that their style of play can win games.
He's faced with a dilemma, though. At the age of 64, he commands respect because of his experience. But owing to his age, no one believes that he's about to usher in a new, long-term renaissance at the club.
Heynckes was already deemed out-of-touch with the modern game in 2004, when he was fired as coach of Schalke. In fact until less than two months ago, when he was surprisingly brought in to salvage Bayern Munich's season, he'd effectively retired from the game.
Probably correctly, most Leverkusen fan blogs are treating his appointment as both a stop-gap measure and the latest in series of hirings in which the club has prioritized name recognition over innovation and vision.
Bayer Leverkusen have enough talent across the pitch to reverse their trend of disappointment and decline. The question is: who will provide the leadership needed to get - and keep - the ball rolling?
Author: Jefferson Chase
Editor: Andreas Illmer