Why the Champions League is more important than the Bundesliga to Leverkusen this season

Xabi Alonso and his German champions will have far more to gain from an impressive European campaign than another title challenge in the Bundesliga

There are probably a number of reasons why Xabi Alonso was delighted to leave the Allianz Arena on Saturday night with a point. For a start, his Bayer Leverkusen side had been completely played off the pitch by their hosts and had done very little to suggest that they’d come to Munich with any intention of trying to win. Another reason may simply be that anything but defeat keeps the title race wide open. But perhaps the most important factor behind Alonso’s diminished ambitions on the night is simply that the Leverkusen boss had more important games to contend with on the horizon. 

Tonight, just four days after locking horns with Bayern, Leverkusen will welcome AC Milan to the BayArena in the second match of their Champions League group stage campaign. While each side can lay claim to an impressive number of players as they both challenge for their respective league titles, there is a notable chasm that exists between both clubs’ histories and indeed legacies in European football. For while Leverkusen may have reached the Champions League final in recent memory, when they were gunned down by that remarkable Zinedine Zidane volley, AC Milan have won the competition seven times and in many ways define themselves by their exploits in the competition. 

Alonso, of course, will know all about Milan’s tenacity in the Champions League, having bested them once in his playing days in that famous final in Istanbul, only to fall prey to them four years later in Athens. But rather than be overcome with some sort of personal vendetta, the Spanish head coach will undoubtedly be looking to this season’s competition as a new horizon for him and his side. After all, the latter stages of the European competition have been uncharted waters for Leverkusen for at least 20 years now and that, perhaps, offers a far more enticing challenge to the ambitious young coach than another tussle with Bayern & Co. back home.