Harry Kane, Bayer Leverkusen and the rise of Bundesliga

Germany’s top division became more competitive, not less, after the arrival of England’s captain. Now there is a new side with a target on their back this season

Bayer Leverkusen coach Xabi Alonso celebrates with his players after winning the Bundesliga and going unbeaten last season. Reuters

When Bayern Munich splurged the biggest ever outgoing transfer fee in German football history to land Harry Kane last summer, it was taken by many to be the final death knell for competitiveness in the Bundesliga.

Bayern had just set the seal on an 11th straight title. The fact Borussia Dortmund had even pushed them close, only being denied by a late Jamal Musiala goal on the last day of the 2022/23 season, was seen as a notable feat for the rest.

The arrival of England’s captain would surely extinguish even vague scares like that for the all-conquering Bavarians.

Well, Kane’s arrival did coincide with a new level of domination in the Bundesliga. But not of the sort everyone was expecting.

Instead, the side with the fourth largest budget in the league and a stadium that is less than half the size of the country’s leading teams enjoyed an unprecedented season of success.

Bayer Leverkusen swept all before them to win their first league title, going undefeated in the process, and added the German Cup to boot.

Did their annus mirabilis save the Bundesliga, which begins again on Saturday, after years of Bayern monopoly?

“If you have 11 years, the same champion, I can speak myself as a fan,” said Fernando Carro, Leverkusen’s chief executive. “If you know who is going to win the league, why follow games?

“At the end of day, OK, it's going to be interesting, who goes down to the second division and who reaches the Champions League. But the most important one is who is the champion.

“We have tried to contribute to a more successful brand by beating Bayern after 11 years. I think it will be important for all the clubs that are part of the league to try to contribute to this excitement in who is going to be champion.”

Carro’s suggestion that years of Bayern domination made the league less interesting seems logical, yet the data does not wholly support the point. After all, crowds have remained healthier there than anywhere else.

In 2023/24, the Bundesliga was the best attended of Europe’s big five leagues, with an average match attendance of just over 39,500.

The English Premier League, by contrast, saw average crowds of 38,557, while even Bundesliga 2’s typical gate of around 28,000 exceeded that of France’s top division.

Peer Naubert, the chief marketing officer of Bundesliga International, thinks football clubs reflect society in Germany.

“What’s the social glue in Germany at the moment?” Naubert said. “The membership of the church is going down, and you see memberships in the political parties going down.

“The only part Germans still heavily associate themselves with is pretty much sport, and especially football.”

In 'Soccernomics', their book dispelling some of the myths of football, Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski point out that sides who monopolise success can make leagues more attractive, rather than less.

“Dominant teams create a special interest of their own,” they write. “In the 1990s, millions of people supported Manchester United and millions of others despised them.

“In a way, both groups were following the club. United were the stars of football’s soap opera. Every other team’s fans dreamt of beating them.” For United in England back then, read Bayern in Germany more recently.

The authors also suggested that football inequality of modern times annoys people “not because it is unprecedented, but because it is more driven by money than it used to be”.

'Soccernomics' was written before the huge inflation in revenues in football over the past decade. The resentment to commercialisation of the game in Germany is most real.

In February, the German Football League abandoned plans to negotiate a billion euro investment deal with a private equity partner because of a fan revolt.

Widespread protests, which included supporters throwing tennis balls and other objects onto pitches, caused delays of up to 30 minutes at matches in the country’s top two divisions.

Even without that funding boost, the Bundesliga is second only to the Premier League in total revenue. But the clubs do not have the same spending might as their rivals across the continent’s top divisions.

For example, only two of the 10 largest transfers in Bundesliga history have seen players arriving.

That is the €95m Kane deal, which was the third biggest transfer fee a German club has been involved with, and Lucas Hernandez, the French left-back who cost Bayern €80m from Atletico Madrid in 2019.

Ousmane Dembele’s move from Dortmund to Barcelona in 2017 was the largest, at €135m, followed by Jude Bellingham’s €103m move from that same club to Real Madrid.

By contrast, in Spain, only two of the 10 biggest transfers clubs have been involved in have seen the player exit the country – Neymar from Barcelona to PSG and Cristiano Ronaldo from Real Madrid to Juventus.

In England, four of the top 10 biggest transfers have been sales – Philipp Coutinho from Liverpool to Barcelona, Eden Hazard and Gareth Bale to Real Madrid from Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur respectively, and Kane to Bayern.

Despite all that, German clubs still excel. There were two of them in the semi-final of the Champions League last season, to one each from Spain and France, while Leverkusen made the final of the Europa League.

More than anyone else, Leverkusen show what can be done with some sound management, a can-do attitude, and - in the form of Xabo Alonso - an outstanding manager.

It costs as little as €45 to be a member of Leverkusen. They won the league despite having a stadium with a smaller capacity (around 30,000) than the average attendance figure for the league. The BayArena is less than half the size of Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund’s stadiums.

Leverkusen went unbeaten throughout the season. But their budget has remained just the same as it was before last season, so repeating their success is going to be a challenge.

“This challenge is difficult because expectations are very high,” said Simon Rolfes, Leverkusen’s managing director of sport.

“Everybody knows in life that in the past, everything was fantastic. We never made a mistake in the game, and all passes were fantastic. Of course, that is not true, even in the last season.

“To start new, to start from zero, to accept that we make mistakes, that is part of the process of developing a team spirit. The thing is not to compare it with the last match day, or the last period of last season.”