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SV Elversberg, a club from a town of just 13,000 people, shocked Bayer Leverkusen 3-0 on their first ever Bundesliga match. The newly promoted side scored twice in the opening 10 minutes and added a third shortly after halftime at the Ursapharm Arena. The result highlights the unpredictability of the German top flight beyond the usual Bayern Munich dominance.
The team from a town with a population of just over 13,000 shocked Bayer Leverkusen in their first top-flight game Elversberg's players applaud their fans after the Bundesliga victory over Bayer Leverkusen at the Ursapharm Arena in Spiesen- Elversberg on Saturday.
Photograph: Andreas Schlichter/AFP via Getty ImagesLast Friday night VfB Stuttgart got first-hand proof of what the rest of the Bundesliga feared: that Bayern Munich are perhaps mightier than ever. The curtain-raiser, though, didn’t actually set the tone for the weekend. German football has long insisted there is more to their elite league than a title race, and now they have a story that shows the world that surprise and wonder does indeed live here too.
Bayer Leverkusen arrived into their opening fixture of the campaign thinking their season might contain greater certainty than the last one, a more tranquil voyage after being blown off course by almost €300 million of player sales and the ill-fated appointment of Erik ten Hag. Enter SV Elversberg, Bundesliga first-timers and representatives of – a “miracle village” as Bild put it – Spiesen-Elversberg, a town with a population of just over 13,000, situated 15km northeast of Saarbrücken, 30 minutes’ drive from the French border.
The miracle got big enough for all to see it on the Bundesliga’s inaugural Saturday afternoon. Seventy minutes into their top-flight debut and the locals gathered in the Ursapharm Arena – currently under a renovation programme to bring it up to a modest 15,000 capacity, with journalists covering the game from a temporary steel gantry on top of scaffolding and accordingly given a safety briefing beforehand – were pinching themselves.
Vincent Wagner’s team led 3-0, courtesy of two goals in the space of 60 seconds in the opening 10 minutes, and then a third 25 seconds after half-time. New Leverkusen coach Carles Martínez, who looked increasingly exasperated on the touchline as the game went on, threw a host of forwards on to salvage the game, and Patrick Schick and Christian Kofané both scored to reduce the arrears, but it wasn’t enough.
A town with no train station and no town hall was now home to a team not only with a first-day Bundesliga win , but a victory over the 2024 champions, no less. SV Elversberg's David Mokwa celebrates scoring the team's third goal with Cole Campbell.
Photograph: Andreas Schlichter/AFP via Getty Images Even arriving in the same division was akin to a “moon landing”, Wagner had said before the game, continuing to say staying up would be their “mission to Mars”. August results may be notoriously fickle and this may seem like years ago by November, but the win was no fluke. And make no mistake, Leverkusen were shook from minute one.
Elversberg pressed and rattled them, with the visitors’ new captain Edmund Tapsoba looking more the Bundesliga debutant, prone as Lukas Petkov opened the scoring and then turning over the ball almost from kick-off, as Cole Campbell swept into the area to bludgeon in a quickfire second. The Bulgarian midfielder Petkov had led from the front in the promotion campaign, scoring 13 and creating another six to pick up the slack after top scorer Younes Ebnoutalib left for Eintracht Frankfurt in the winter break.
True to form, Petkov also created David Mokwa’s goal at the start of the second half, which turned out to be the difference with a delicious delivery from the right. Yet Campbell is really indicative of the step up. Bought from Borussia Dortmund for €6 million in the summer, the 20-year-old from Houston has been rated for a while without truly making a dent in the top tier, either at BVB or on loan at Hoffenheim.
He started here – as much of his team did – like a man on a mission, and having laid out a record fee, Elversberg need this to work too. This spend needs to be put in perspective, of course. When Strasbourg full back Guéla Doué completes his move to the BayArena on Monday, it will be the fourth time this summer that Die Werkself have spent in excess of €20 million on a player.
Leverkusen, and their coach, had no excuses. After an encouraging pre-season, they were beset by many of the old problems that undercut their Champions League hopes last season. Mark Flekken, their refreshingly blunt goalkeeper, could have been talking in March or May when he told the media: “I can’t even offer an explanation right now. ” On the other side, it was all joy.
Flekken’s opposite number Nicolas Kristof, whose brilliant save from Jonas Hofmann in stoppage time shut down Leverkusen’s last hope of taking something from the game, was one of two players in the line-up who has been at the club since they were in the regional fourth tier, winning promotion to the 3. Liga in 2022, at the end of his debut season at the club. It is already a fairytale.
If they can build on their start as they build that main stand, it would be a story for the Bundesliga ages. − GuardianActor Olwen Fouéré: ‘I firmly believe we are in the last days of the Anthropocene’Irish man in Birmingham: The English often seem less interested in us than we are in them A Wicklow woman in Marbella: ‘I would make friends in the summer and they would then go home.
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