Köln let down the tyres on Xabi Alonso’s Leverkusen Lamborghini

I t was always going to end at some point. They just didn’t want it to be here. Leverkusen’s phenomenal unbeaten run was stopped at 14 games, at the start of the week which will contain their Europa League semi-final first leg date with destiny against Roma.

“It just wasn’t a good performance,” said the sporting director, Simon Rolfes, seeking to de-dramatise the disappointment. “It was down to us that we lost this game. No one else.” The midfielder Robert Andrich so often the barometer of mood in good times and bad, who always seems to find the right words, was a touch more frank. “It doesn’t get much more difficult to take than when a run like this ends in the derby against Köln,” he lamented. “And in the BayArena.”

It hurt. Xabi Alonso already knew that his team weren’t getting into the Champions League via the Bundesliga’s top four – hold that thought when it comes to the Europa League, with this magnetic coach looking like he might be the one to finally jettison that old ‘Neverkusen’ tag. Their dynamic has been so overwhelmingly positive that this was beyond deflating, though, at just the wrong time. Andrich admitted he would “go to bed angry”.

The frustration was compounded by the manner in which the hosts had briefly clawed themselves to parity in the first half. It was so Alonso-era Leverkusen in manner that it was almost pastiche. Andrich won the ball back deep in the right-back position and then it moved quickly, right to left; Jérémie Frimpong to Amine Adli to Mitchel Bakker, down the left channel to Moussa Diaby who held it up for a second, before picking out the onrushing Adli to fire confidently home from the edge of the area.

It took 16 seconds from start to finish, and this is what Alonso’s team do.