Champions League: Bayer bankruptcy against Piraeus – first crisis for Hjulmand

BThere probably aren’t many top-class football clubs in this world that are better than Bayer Leverkusen in 2025. In December, the group club qualified for the quarter-finals of the DFB Cup with a 1-0 win in Dortmund. They saved an important point for promotion to the Champions League in the 88th minute in the match against Newcastle and ended up winning one of those six-point games against league rivals RB Leipzig that are as valuable as a Maharaja’s diamond. As they looked back on the year, Bayer bosses Fernando Carro and Simon Rolfes gratefully remembered the day at the beginning of September when Kasper Hjulmand promised them to take over the head coaching job. Eurosport compared the widely praised Danish football teacher with the creator: he “breathed new life” into the Werkself.

In January 2026, however, the situation will look completely different, and Hjulmand can be glad that he is not the coach of Real Madrid – because then he might not stay there for much longer. After Leverkusen’s 2-0 defeat at Olympiakos Piraeus on Tuesday evening, the coach was unanimously attested to Bayer’s first crisis, and that is not a finding that he could contradict with good arguments: The fact that there was the third defeat in the third game of the year is unpleasant enough. The result of the balance sheet is even more unpleasant: 1:7 goals in three games show that neither defense nor attack are at the desired level of performance that we are used to at the end of the year.

The 4-1 defeat against VfB Stuttgart the weekend before last was apparently not a blatant blip, but rather a trendsetter. As a result, Bayer currently has a double problem with the Champions League: If the final group game is lost against Villarreal next week, there is a risk of an abrupt end. And in the Bundesliga the competition has been strengthened with two six-point defeats – the fight for the European places for next season has become even tighter. “We put ourselves under pressure,” summed up Hjulmand in Piraeus.

At Olympiakos, previously placed at the bottom of the long Champions League table, Leverkusen were behind after less than two minutes. The coach didn’t want to call it an accident at all; he looked at the big picture and saw that the drive and direction weren’t right: instead of going forward, his team played backwards, he complained. In the back line, the French defender Loïc Badé got into trouble, which cost him a corner kick and subsequently made it 0-1. Hjulmand did not address the personal mistakes, Badé’s indecision and attacker Christian Kofane’s inadequate shielding: “We have to play our game better,” said the coach, the word our emphasizing.

In December, Leverkusen’s game worked almost as well as it did under Hjulmand’s predecessor, Xabi Alonso. Two Spaniards were at the center of the action: Aleix García, 28, shone as a ball distributor and Alejandro Grimaldo, 30, as a playmaker. On Tuesday evening, too, the two had good and very good scenes in their roles, but they also repeatedly sprinkled in inaccurate and dirty passes. The Bayer game was unusually hectic, and Olympiacos knew how to take advantage of it. The Greek champions left the ball to the guests, held on aggressively and made the goals seem like stabs in the back: Just in Leverkusen’s best phase shortly before the break, when Kofane and Lukas Vázquez had great chances to equalize (and missed them), Piraeus made it 2-0.

The goal developed from a good counterattack and a poor defensive performance that challenged Hjulmand’s self-control: he barely managed not to mention the responsible defenders Badé and Robert Andrich by name. He described the rest clearly: “We are two (defenders) against one (attacker) on the last line, not one against one, not outnumbered. We have to do that!” Bayer never recovered from this 2-0 defeat, despite a lot of effort.

Kasper Hjulmand countered the prevailing trend of trying to decipher the game using statistical values ​​with his conclusion of the evening. On paper, Bayer 04 achieved a great victory: ball possession, passes, corner kicks, shots on goal, chances to score, xG rate, pi squared – “we gained all the data,” said the coach, “but not the most important data.” Only Piraeus scored goals. Bayer 04 still has a lot of catching up to do in this discipline in 2026.