Winning the Bundesliga this season, after a decade of Bayern Munich dominance, would be remarkable enough for Xabi Alonso’s Bayer Leverkusen.
More remarkably, they are still in the hunt for a treble (not the treble, but a treble), being in the DFB-Pokal final where they will be heavy favourites against second-tier strugglers Kaiserslautern, and today face West Ham United in the Europa League quarter-finals.
Even more remarkable is that Leverkusen, with winter turning to spring and the evenings growing ever longer, are undefeated. In all competitions. All competitions.
41 games, 36 victories, five draws and zero defeats.
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Leverkusen are unbeaten at halfway. Could they really have an invincible season?
They have a minimum of nine games remaining, or a maximum of 12. What they have already done is incredible: should they avoid defeat a dozen more times, their achievement will be unparalleled.
Perhaps such an astonishing season doesn’t need to be compared or debated, but it probably is worth putting this unbeaten run — let’s say it again: in all competitions — into context, both in this season and beyond…
It may surprise you to learn that, at the time of writing, Leverkusen’s unbeaten run is not out there on its own in men’s European football this season. Several clubs have at some point this season gone extended periods without defeat.
The New Saints (TNS), who play in Wales’ top tier, went 41 games without defeat, stretching from August to March. However, TNS won’t be adding to that number, having been defeated 2-1 a few weeks ago by Airdrieonians in the Scottish Challenge Cup which, despite what the name might suggest, welcomes foreign guests every season, like a sort of Celtic Copa America.
They also lost three of their first four games of this season, being eliminated from the earliest Champions League qualifiers by BK Hacken (of Sweden) and then knocked out of the Europa League preliminaries by the superbly named FC Swift Hesperange, who you don’t need us to tell you are from Luxembourg.
Should Leverkusen avoid defeat in the first leg against West Ham, their magic number will tick over to 42 and they will be out on their own, in terms of numbers as well as intangible glory. But just how far off everyone else are they in Europe this season?
There are 54 UEFA-affiliated top divisions across Europe: 12 of them don’t follow the classic August to May (ish) season, so their 2024 campaigns have either only just started or are yet to begin. Of the rest, behind Leverkusen and TNS, the next longest unbeaten run in all competitions this season is 32, achieved by Northern Irish side Larne.
Manchester City last lost in December (to Aston Villa), and their madcap 3-3 draw with Real Madrid on Tuesday was the 26th in their run. Perhaps surprisingly, given they seem to be on a God-level streak domestically, Arsenal’s longest unbeaten run of the season is 10 games, with which they opened the season. Their current record is blighted by the 1-0 defeat to Porto in the first leg of their Champions League last-16 game, sticking out like a sore thumb amid their flawless Premier League form.
As for the other ‘Big Five’ leagues? In Spain, Real Madrid went 21 games without losing between September and January, a stretch bookended by defeats to Atletico Madrid. In Italy, Juventus have enjoyed an unblemished run of 19 games. Meanwhile, France’s Paris Saint-Germain had a 27-game unbeaten streak ended by Barcelona in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final on Wednesday night.
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A few other things to note from this season: every league has at least one team that has gone at least 10 games undefeated; runaway Eredivisie leaders PSV Eindhoven got to March and 26 games without losing in the league, but by that point, they had already been knocked out of the Dutch cup and lost to Arsenal in the Champions League — their longest run in all competitions was 20 games.
Belgian side Union Saint-Gilloise went 24 league games unbeaten in the regular season but were scuppered by defeats in Europe. Petrocub in Moldova haven’t lost since September, but that’s only 16 games. Only one club other than Leverkusen made it from the start of the season into 2024 without losing a single game: that was Maltese giants Floriana, their fun ended with a loss to Hamrun Spartans in early January.
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That’s this season, but where does their achievement — and potential further achievement — rank beyond that?
This is where things get slightly eggy, as records for smaller competitions, particularly if you really go back in history, can be unreliable.
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We know only two English teams have gone for whole seasons without losing in the league — Preston in 1888-89 and Arsenal in 2003-04 — but both lost in various cup competitions. That feat isn’t as rare as you may think — Red Star Belgrade did it just last season in Serbia, Celtic and Rangers have both done it in the past few years — but should Leverkusen avoid defeat in their remaining six league games, they will be the first to do it in the Bundesliga.
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But we can say with a degree of certainty that no top-level club in Europe has gone a full season without defeat in multiple competitions. Celtic went 62 games unbeaten between 1915 and 1917, while Union Saint-Gilloise did 60 between 1933 and 1935, but neither included any competition other than the league — the respective domestic cups were not held those years for various reasons.
To get a loosely comparable figure to Leverkusen’s achievement, we have to look at the years after the advent of European competition in 1955: after that, as far as we can tell, the longest unbeaten run in all competitions is 48 games, achieved by Eusebio’s Benfica in the 1960s, which spanned two seasons. Two Croatian clubs — Dinamo Zagreb in 2014-2015 and Rijeka in 2016-2017 — have done 45, Rangers managed 44 in 1992-1993 and Juventus in 2011-2012 did 43.
Both Arrigo Sacchi’s great Milan side of the early 1990s and Louis van Gaal’s young Ajax team that won the 1995 Champions League managed 42, which is the mark that Leverkusen could hit tonight. The record in English football is Nottingham Forest, who crammed 40 unspoiled games into 1978.
The Ajax side that won the 1995 Champions League went 42 games unbeaten (Clive Brunskill/ALLSPORT via Getty Images)
Looking beyond Europe, again it’s tricky to be definitive but we know that Egypt’s Al-Ahly went the 2004-05 season undefeated, winning the Egyptian Premier League, the Egyptian Cup and the CAF Champions League. If you have any other examples, feel free to suggest them.
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It speaks to Leverkusen’s brilliance under Alonso this season that only winning the Bundesliga, something that was essentially unthinkable even at the start of this season, will almost feel like a letdown at this point. Even the most apathetic neutral will surely be willing them on to sweep the lot, without losing a single game.
(Top photo: Lars Baron/Getty Images)