The seats began to empty with around 10 minutes remaining. First a few, then in their dozens, and then in their hundreds and thousands: Bayer Leverkusen fans pouring down the steps, massing behind the advertising hoardings, separated from the pitch only by a thin yellow string of stewards. Waiting for their time. Waiting for the moment when they could no longer be held back.
“Ihr werdet nie deutscher Meister!” rival fans always used to sing as a taunt to their Leverkusen counterparts. You will never be German champions! Over the long years of no, the long years of nearly, the five runners-up finishes, the six third places, the splutters and the collapses, perhaps even Leverkusen fans began to believe it too. Now, as the minutes ticked away, and with a delicious irony, they sang those same words to themselves: a requiem to the old Bayer 04 being buried, a hymn to the new one being born.