How does Bayer Leverkusen's undefeated run compare to other great German teams?
Bundesliga champions Bayer Leverkusen have gone 45 games undefeated across all competitions, but do they have the league record? And what other teams have come close?
Leverkusen have been a joy to behold this season, scoring 75 goals and conceding just 20 on the way to a first-ever Bundesliga title - going from Neverkusen to never losing this term.
Xabi Alonso has moulded a team in his image. The midfielder was the consummate team player across a career that took in trophy-laden spells at Liverpool, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, and a continental treble remains on for his Leverkusen, who have been more than the sum of their parts.
That's not to say there aren't some shining stars at the BayArena. Wing-backs Álex Grimaldo and Jeremie Frimpong have contributed a barely fathomable 50 goals and assists between them in 2023/24 and Florian Wirtz looks like perhaps the best young player in the game with a hat-trick in a title-clinching win over Werder Bremen.
But they are part of a well-oiled 3-4-2-1 unit, one that hasn't tasted defeat since they lost 3-0 to Bochum on the final day of the 2022/23 campaign - 45 games ago.
It is a record that is now 13 games and counting better than the next-best, which belongs to Hansi Flick's Bayern of four seasons ago. Flick had only picked up the reins from Niko Kovač in November 2019, but concluded the campaign with an intercontinental sextuple of titles. They were finally beaten, by Hoffenheim, in September of the following season.
The third-best run goes to Werder Bremen, who broke Bayern's strangle-hold on the Bundesliga in 2004 after putting together a 27-game unbeaten run across all competitions, during which time Johan Micoud, Aílton and Co. also won the DF Cup.
A post-Kevin Keegan Hamburg are fourth on this particular list, while two incarnations of Bayern round out the top five, with their 1988 and 1986 vintages both going 25 games without defeat.
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Leverkusen are still short of the record in the Bundesliga, however, that honour going to Pep Guardiola's Bayern, whose 53-game streak was actually kicked off by his predecessor Jupp Heynckes. The period saw Guardiola win the first of his three Bundesliga titles, although his first defeat came to Jürgen Klopp's Borussia Dortmund in the season-opening Super Cup.
Klopp had previously led Die Schwarzgelben to back-to-back Bundesliga's in 2011 and 2012 - the first time that Bayern had been denied the title by the same team in consecutive seasons since the aforementioned Hamburg, for whom Horst Hrubesch banished memories of Keegan with 18 goals in the Bundesliga and 20 in all competitions in 1982/83.
It means that if Leverkusen see out the current 34-game season without defeat - which few would now back against them doing - they would sneak onto this particular podium behind Bayern and Hamburg.
The outright record - across all competitions - belongs to Alonso, and he is fast adding silverware. To the relief of Bayer fans and many a neutral, he has reaffirmed his commitment to Leverkusen's cause and will be at the helm next season, in which time the Bundesliga record could well topple too.
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