Winner of the German DFB Cup: - Leverkusen Claims Near-Flawless Season Ending with Championship and Cup
Xabi Alonso, the double coach of the German soccer champions from Leverkusen, celebrated with his players and was embraced by everyone. The fans cheered loudly as the team had just won the DFB Cup and completed the most successful season in the club's history with a double win. "I'm proud and I'm happy for the players," said Alonso. "They absolutely deserved it," he added and announced that he would be drinking German beer that night.
It had not been easy for the Bayer team three days after their 3-0 defeat in the Europa League final against Atalanta Bergamo. 1. FC Kaiserslautern, a second-division side, posed a tough challenge. Odilon Kossounou even received a yellow card in the 44th minute. "We really wanted to win this match," said Simon Rolfes, the sporting director of Bayer. "It's fantastic!"
The winning goal came from captain and goalkeeper Lukas Hradecky who held up the golden trophy after the game. Granit Xhaka had scored a dream goal in the 16th minute to take the lead against Kaiserslautern in front of 74,322 spectators in the packed Olympiastadion. "I'm really happy to be holding the trophy," said Robert Andrich from the Leverkusen team. "It's an amazing feeling."
Bayer had won their second cup title since 1993 while Kaiserslautern missed out on what could have been a surprise victory in the 81st cup final. The legendary Friedhelm Funkel, the coach of Kaiserslautern, had led his team into the match as the "biggest underdogs" in the history of the game. This was his fifth cup final in total. Unfortunately, he once again failed to secure the trophy, this time at his third attempt as a coach. "Even if we had a player advantage, that doesn't mean anything against a team like this," explained Funkel. He did not say whether this was his last game as a coach.
After the disappointment of losing in Dublin, Xhaka, the coach of the Bayer team, encouraged his teammates. "We now need to find out what kind of character this team really has," said the Swiss. Alonso made changes to his starting lineup. Lukas Hradecky replaced Matej Kovar in goal and all five of them moved into the team: Kossounou, Robert Andrich, Jonas Hofmann, and Patrik Schick.
In the Sky interview before the game started, Funkel promised a "knife-edge battle." In anticipation of Leverkusen's expected dominance, he had even jokingly suggested he would park the team bus in front of his own goal. However, this did not happen. Instead, the supporters of the underdogs staged a choreography: a giant red devil stretched almost under the stadium roof. But the Kaiserslautern fans also made use of banned pyrotechnics almost continuously.
FCK's first decent shot on goal came from Daniel Hanslik, and then the Bayer team played their usual passing game in the tense atmosphere. Xhaka then scored a fantastic goal from around 25 meters after less than a quarter of an hour. Leverkusen took control of the match and kept chasing the ball. Krahl missed a cross from Alejandro Grimaldo, and then Schick missed a chance. However, Kossounou received a yellow card for a bad tackle on Tomiak.
Raschl then had a chance to equalize, but his low shot bounced off the post. Funkel had led his team to a surprising 2-1 win against Bayern Munich as a player in 1985, and he cheered his team on energetically until the very end. After a break due to smoke in the air from flares and firecrackers, Leverkusen looked for the winning goal but failed to show their usual ball magic.
Following almost an hour of continuous play, Ache's shot narrowly missed the target, and moments later, Hradecky pulled off an incredible stop. Lautern continued to push forward relentlessly, forcing Alonso's team into a defensive frenzy. Despite their best efforts, Leverkusen was unable to regain control of the match. In the end, Hamburg became the sixth team to achieve a double victory. Hannover 96 was the only second division club to win the cup back in 1992.
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Source: www.stern.de
