The success story simply continues, and Bayer Leverkusen has come a little closer to a possible triple this season after the 47th game without defeat. The new German football champions deservedly won 2-0 against AS Roma, fifth in the Italian league, in the semi-final first leg of the Europa League. And Leverkusen’s specialty of late goals wasn’t necessary this time: Florian Wirtz (28th minute) and Robert Andrich (73rd) scored in time.
So everything this man thinks up continues to work. After all, Xabi Alonso has two proven center forwards in his squad – and the Leverkusen master coach left both of them out of his starting line-up in Rome. Alonso relied more on speed than on robustness, and the Spaniard had once again shown the right touch.
At least after AS Roma failed to take advantage of their first big chance to score. Romelu Lukaku’s header (21′) after a corner only flew against the crossbar. After that, Leverkusen’s attack machine got going – and how.
Jeremie Frimpong, always and everywhere faster than all opponents, missed a first opportunity (23rd), after which the Dutchman Rick Karsdorp proved to be a helpful partner – the Dutchman’s casual return game with the outside of his foot was rather short. Frimpong fed Wirtz and Germany’s extremely talented international took the lead (28th) on the day before his 21st birthday.
Despairing: Lorenzo Pellegrini and his Roman teammates can’t get through.AP
While Rome had had slight visual advantages up to this point, the game then tipped very clearly in Bayer’s direction. But Alonso was unlikely to have been satisfied at halftime, as this first leg should have had a clear direction at that point. However, Wirtz (31′) and twice Frimpong (34′ and 45’+1) missed the opportunity for further goals.
There wasn’t much to suggest trouble afterwards either. Bayer played much better football, missed a header chance by Piero Hincapie (51′), played a counterattack by Amine Adli (53′) too sloppily and was reminded that something like that can quickly take revenge when Cristante (56′) followed up From a corner, he was able to head quite freely and quite dangerously, which could have equalized.
Otherwise, the Romans continued to struggle against a confident and mature Leverkusen team who had everything under control – and who threatened to squander a promising counterattack again after 73 minutes. Andrich, who was eliminated from the Europa League semi-finals in Rome a year ago with a broken metatarsal, ended the bad memories of that moment with his goal to make it 2-0.
As a result, AS Roma were a little more reminiscent of the team from the previous year, even if the new coach Daniele de Rossi had drastically changed the style of play since January. But even all sorts of old-style provocations didn’t get Leverkusen off the road to success. The door to the final is wide open.