Die Werkself lost the Europa League final but ended season with two trophies and belief things will only get better

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. They had shown they could fall with the finishing line in sight - and how - to Zinedine Zidane’s famous, thunderous left-footer at Hampden Park, or to a rampant Bayern Munich in the mid-Covid DFB Pokal final in Berlin. For a more modern twist you could even throw in last year’s Europa League semi-final under Xabi Alonso’s command, in which José Mourinho and Roma miraculously survived a barrage in the BayArena (23 Leverkusen shots to Roma’s one). Not this season, though.

The greatest testament to Bayer Leverkusen’s extraordinary season is that losing Wednesday’s Europa League final in Dublin (and comprehensively at that) to Atalanta felt like the shock, rather than Die Werkself getting there in the first place to fluff their lines. Fifty-one games unbeaten up until that point doesn’t quite do it justice. Alonso’s side have been a juggernaut, trampling all in their way and, on the occasions they have found themselves behind, eventually reeling in their opponents with increasing inevitability. The later-than-late equalisers and winners against Stuttgart, Borussia Dortmund, Qarabag, Roma – the list goes on on – had the feel of one of the giants of Europe making gravity count, rather than an upstart, first-time champion, as they were in this season’s Bundesliga.

St Pauli striker on his long road, the club’s political role and being the only English forward to win a title in Germany this term

“Everyone thought it would be Harry Kane winning a league but instead it is me,” Dapo Afolayan says of being the only English striker to win a title in Germany this season, which in turn has earned him the opportunity to test himself against the England captain next season in the Bundesliga.

The former Bolton player was an influential member of St Pauli’s promotion-winning side after swapping Greater Manchester for Hamburg 18 months ago. It has been a long journey for the 26-year-old, one in which Afolayan left Chelsea’s academy aged 14 in order to get the education he wanted, leading to a degree in civil engineering while playing part-time at Loughborough University and with Solihull Moors before being plucked from the bottom of the fifth tier by West Ham. Next season he will come up against some of the continent’s best. It is a long way from playing in the ninth tier in a team of students.

Morocco international on the togetherness, tenacity and smart management that has powered German champions’ record season

Life in the Bayer Leverkusen changing room is never boring when Jeremie Frimpong is around. Just ask Amine Adli. “It’s a lot of fun,” smirks the Morocco international. “Every day something is happening. Every player is funny in his own way and when you have a guy like Jeremie, he is always making everyone laugh. Even the coach sometimes … ”

There have been plenty of other reasons for Xabi Alonso to smile during the record-breaking campaign in which Leverkusen have become the first team to go through a Bundesliga season unbeaten. The Spaniard clambered into the stands at the Bay Arena after Saturday’s final-day defeat of Augsburg to celebrate with supporters at the club once referred to as “Neverkusen”. He will round off the campaign with a historic treble if they win Wednesday’s Europa League final against Atalanta in Dublin and Saturday’s German Cup final against second-tier Kaiserslautern.

Stuttgart share Leverkusen’s growth of having finished this campaign with a barely believable 40 points more than last

From start to finish the afternoon that confirmed Bundesliga champions Bayer Leverkusen as unbeaten Bundesliga champions Bayer Leverkusen was what has come to be typical of them. The voracious feasting on opponents’ mistakes, as Amine Adli did to provide Victor Boniface with the opener. The evidence that Xabi Alonso has drawn things from these players they never dared believe were there, when midfield destroyer Robert Andrich tucked in an artful rabona. The false tension, when Augbsurg teenager Mert Kömür scored a goal worthy of the style of Alonso’s team to bring the deficit back to just one, but we knew Leverkusen were never going to blow it.

Yet the moment that really captured Die Werkself’s imperious manner wasn’t a moment on the field. It came after, in the celebrations, when captain Lukas Hradecky ascended to the capo’s podium at the front of the Kurve, taking the Meisterschale with him. The Finland goalkeeper handed the trophy over to fans at the front of the throng, so they too could raise the Bundesliga among their peers. It was a beautiful gesture and a very trusting one. Hradecky didn’t guide it around and had no worries that it would come back in one piece. That trademark Alonso calm that has given them clarity in crucial moments was even endemic at party time.