Bayer Leverkusen travels to Piraeus for the first leg of the Champions League playoffs

Jonas Hofmann was the first to go onto the pitch and look up into the sky over Leverkusen-Bürrig. He couldn’t expect sunshine there, it was raining heavily, but Hofmann didn’t lose the smile with which he had just entered the stage. And even if he didn’t enter the pitch singing and tap-dancing like Fred Astaire, he was still with an almost frivolous cheerfulness when he made his first contact with the ball with Ibrahim Maza.

Hofmann didn’t skilfully ignore the bad weather just because he knew that he was about to board a charter plane to Athens with Bayer Leverkusen. He was really serious about being in a good mood, as the trip to the play-off meeting with Olympiakos Piraeus is his first trip to a Champions League game this season. At the start of the season, the head coach at the time, Erik ten Hag, had no use for the 33-year-old offensive player; the club put other professionals on UEFA’s registration list. It wasn’t just Hofmann who suffered from this outclassing decision – Ten Hag’s successor Kasper Hjulmand also repeatedly regretted the absence of the versatile and experienced professional in the autumn.

However, a comparison of the new and the old registration list illustrates the improvisations that the club was forced to make in the summer. And the movement that still prevails in the squad. All 13 new signings were registered for the Champions League in September, Hofmann and the then convalescent Martin Terrier were not. Both are now returning, while newcomers such as the proudly presented Argentinian loan player Claudio Echeverri and the attacker Eliesse Ben Seghir, who was acquired for more than 30 million euros, are already gone or still need some help. Defender Tim Oermann, who was brought from Bochum and initially loaned out to Graz, has now been recalled to the club and included in the Champions League squad.

Leverkusen was lucky: instead of Dortmund, their opponent is now called Piraeus

“We are still a new team,” Hofmann recently emphasized, in recognition of an interim assessment that he considers commendable: In the first year after the Alonso era, Bayer is in the semi-finals of the DFB Cup, is at the top of the Bundesliga and is still active internationally. The games against Piraeus will now decide whether the Champions League season can be considered a success internally. “Top four in Germany, top 16 in Europe” – this is how sports director Simon Rolfes still defines the goals for the season, as he revealed on Tuesday at his home training ground. However, the calculation is no longer based on confidence and hope, but rather on good experiences. Players like Ibrahim Maza, 20, Jarell Quansah, 23, and Christian Kofane, 19, have exceeded expectations. Others, like Malik Tillman, 23, are still working on it. Rolfes, who irritated even well-meaning people with his optimism in the summer, sees his department’s work as vindicated.

If the draw hadn’t been kind to Bayer 04, the trip from rainy Leverkusen to rainy Dortmund would have led to the third and fourth of five meetings this season with Borussia (including the DFB Cup). But the fairy brought about a reunion with Olympiakos, for which Hofmann had already issued the appropriate slogan: As is customary in football, he said the sentence with the score still unfinished. In mid-January, Bayer lost 2-0 at the Karaiskakis Stadium, a defeat that was both unfortunate and also labeled “particularly stupid”. The first goal came in the second minute of the game, the second just before half-time. Each with support from Leverkusen. The team “doesn’t yet have the stability at the highest level,” says Rolfes. The trip to Piraeus now offers a lesson on at least a high level. Rolfes warns his people about a fiery audience and an unpleasant opponent – but the Bayer professionals probably haven’t forgotten these features, even in the current super-fast pace of competition.

There are no complaints about a full calendar coming from Leverkusen. “We need games to grow together as a team,” says coach Hjulmand, while Rolfes says he is happy “that I can watch the Champions League in Athens – and not on the sofa.” The sofa could still soon become a place of longing: If Bayer manages revenge against Olympiakos, the English weekly rhythm will continue until mid-March. And perhaps, the chances are 50:50, the next European Cup trip will be to FC Bayern instead of London to Arsenal FC. Free state instead of abroad, just like last year when the round of 16 against Munich ended with two humiliating defeats.

Jonas Hofmann would still have nothing to complain about: “My goal is to play as many Champions League games as possible,” he said at the weekend. Just hearing the anthem has “something magical.” You could even see his magic on the training field.