A few old ghosts were in these days to visit with Rudi Völler. After eleven years, the sport Director of Bayer Leverkusen is again with his club in a Grand final, in Berlin his team against FC Bayern plays this Saturday (20 PM in the F. A. Z.-Liveticker of the German DFB Cup and in the ARD) to the profit of the DFB Cup, which flushes out beyond all the enthusiasm, some unpleasant memories to the surface. The old stories of the missed opportunities to “run after us a bit,” describes the world of his everyday life with the unforgettable defeats, the embossing, the Image and even, perhaps, the essence of the Bundesliga club until today is stronger than the great successes.

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18 years Ago, had the factory club with a gorgeous game reached the team to the Finals in the DFB Pokal and the Champions League, two game days before the end of the season at the top of the Bundesliga table and won a title. test Two years previously, she playful to a traumatic Saturday in Unterhaching, the safe believed to be German championship. Even then, Voller worked in Leverkusen, Germany. Although he was the 1990 world champion and in 1993 won with Olympique Marseille in the Champions League, a national title in Germany of the world has won but never. Neither as a footballer nor as a functionary.

After these experiences around the turn of the Millennium, the question is whether the Leverkusen since winning the Uefa Cup in 1988 and the victory in the DFB Cup in 1993, were able to celebrate a title more, because they simply had a lot of bad luck. Or whether the many of the setbacks have anything to do with this club, as Bruno Labbadia suspected once. The day Bayer Leverkusen in 2009, most recently in a Cup final, said the former coach of a “comfort zone”, in which the player is likely to have a comfortable life. Bayer lost 0:1 against Werder Bremen.

In the history of the club, had the term “comfort zone” so that a fixed space is directly to the side of the word creation, “Vizekusen”, the former managing Director Wolfgang holzhäuser was once even protect. For the past 20 years, the football club based in Leverkusen is under the urgent suspicion to have an inexplicable title, inhibition developed. “Always Second, although bitter, but after all, the Second” describes the wooden houses of the attitude with which you here have long comforted. The Good thing is that they have succumbed to the never the hubris that some of the traditional club was fatal. The shadow side: While a Team like Bayern, even a meaningless game in Wolfsburg on the last round with maximum greed and win, says Rudi Völler: “of course, I also want the highest possible success”, two sentences later, the fact that individual defeats no end of the world, because the big picture fits: “If a club such as we achieved in the last ten years, six times in the group stage of the Champions League, it was still successful.”

In the past few days, says Peter Bosz has informed about this history. The Dutch Trainer “knows the history of us, since we’re talking about it,” says the sports Director, because in this summer, it’s not a beautiful success, and a gold trophy for the showcase. Bayer Leverkusen has with this highly talented team to the fascinating, Kai Havertz the opportunity to renew the identity of its own, and the old Image finally lay. “The victory would have been an extremely high priority for the club,” says defense chief, Sven Bender, is already for the sixth Time in a Cup final.