Leverkusen’s unbeaten title and Stuttgart’s second-place finish changed the Bundesliga’s familiar hierarchy in 2023/24. One club completed a league campaign without defeat for the first time in Bundesliga history; the other went from surviving a relegation play-off to finishing above Bayern Munich.
The final table captured the scale of both achievements. Leverkusen collected 90 points, winning 28 matches and drawing six, with 89 goals scored and 24 conceded. Stuttgart finished on 73 points, one ahead of Bayern. Two very different campaigns had taken the top two places.
Looking back, the distinction matters. Leverkusen combined control with tactical flexibility and repeated resistance to defeat. Stuttgart turned a precarious starting point into sustained results. Neither achievement can be explained simply by pointing to Bayern’s difficulties.
Alonso gave Leverkusen different ways to win
Xabi Alonso’s side could be recognised through its midfield distribution and attacking width. Granit Xhaka gave the team a reliable distributor, while Florian Wirtz found space further forward. Jeremie Frimpong and Alejandro Grimaldo offered additional threats from the flanks, forcing opponents to defend more than the central route to goal.
Yet the 3-0 victory over Bayern showed Alonso’s willingness to alter that familiar approach. Josip Stanišić started instead of Frimpong, Nathan Tella stretched the play further forward, and Leverkusen defended in a compact 5-2-3. They had only 38 per cent possession, but Bayern struggled to break them down.
The change did not remove Leverkusen’s attacking ambition. Wirtz’s movement complicated Bayern’s marking, while Xhaka could exploit the space that appeared when opponents followed the playmaker. Alonso had changed the balance of the team without losing its main sources of creativity.
That match is a useful corrective to the idea that Leverkusen simply overwhelmed every opponent with possession. Against their closest title rival at the time, the willingness to defend patiently was part of the plan. A recognisable style still left room for a different match strategy.
Other afternoons demanded recovery rather than control. Robert Andrich’s 97th-minute equaliser in the 2-2 draw with Stuttgart preserved the unbeaten league record after the title had already been secured. The newly crowned champions were still being tested, and Stuttgart came close to inflicting the defeat nobody else had managed.
Stuttgart turned survival into second place
Stuttgart’s rise supplied the season’s other major departure from expectation. Having needed the relegation play-off to retain their Bundesliga place a year earlier, they could reasonably have viewed stability as progress. Instead, Sebastian Hoeness took them into direct competition with the league’s leading clubs.
Serhou Guirassy’s 28 league goals were central to that change. His finishing gave Stuttgart the cutting edge required to turn promising attacking play into results. Any account of their climb has to give him considerable credit, while also recognising how the team created opportunities around him.
Hoeness normally organised Stuttgart in a 4-2-3-1, with Chris Führich and Maximilian Mittelstädt working together on the left. Deniz Undav added another goal threat. The variety mattered: opponents had to account for combinations out wide as well as the danger posed by Guirassy through the middle.
The improvement reached beyond the league table. Führich, Mittelstädt, Waldemar Anton and Undav were called into Germany’s squad for the March friendlies against France and the Netherlands. Recognition spread across the side rather than stopping with its leading scorer.
Stuttgart’s draw at Leverkusen also deserves to be remembered from the visitors’ perspective. Andrich supplied the dramatic ending, but Stuttgart had put themselves in position to win away to the champions. Their final placing was backed by an ability to trouble the best team in the division.
For international audiences, football coverage also sits alongside commercial betting guides, including Online Sports Betting Australia Sites and sports betting uden ROFUS on leadership.ng. Such material is separate from the tactical and sporting questions that defined this season.
Two different measures of success
Bayern’s third place provides the backdrop, but the margins tell different stories. Leverkusen finished 18 points ahead of them; Stuttgart’s advantage was one. The champions established a commanding lead, while the runners-up won a much narrower contest for position.
For Leverkusen, the unbeaten record made a first Bundesliga title exceptional even by championship standards. For Stuttgart, the distance travelled from the previous season made second place remarkable. Reading both campaigns on their own terms gives a fuller account of 2023/24 than treating them as supporting stories in Bayern’s disappointment.
