Bayer Leverkusen’s coach, Roger Schmidt, made a trip to London to watch Tuesday’s Champions League opponents, Tottenham Hotspur, take on Emirates Marketing Project at White Hart Lane this month. He scouts all of his opponents but he was particularly looking forward to this one as he would see a coach very similar to himself,
Mauricio Pochettino, take on someone whom he had faced many times – and for whom he made life very difficult – in the Bundesliga, Pep Guardiola.
Over the course of seven matches, Schmidt’s side took points off Bayern on four occasions. In a league that appreciates any team that makes life difficult for Bayern Munich, Schmidt was quickly heralded as an exceptional coach and it was even suggested that he may be the long-term successor to Guardiola at the Allianz Arena.
Yet on a cold, Sunday afternoon in north London he witnessed Spurs not only take points off Guardiola, but also
out-press them in a 2-0 victory. “I know Pep Guardiola’s football from his three years in Germany very well and how he likes to play,” Schmidt tells the Guardian. “But Tottenham made sure the game was played their way – it was a super game.”
It is no surprise that Schmidt took delight in watching Pochettino’s side play. Attacking, aggressive football with a high defensive line and a clear desire for a quick transition from defence to attack sums up both Spurs and Leverkusen under their current coaches. Two teams, two coaches but an almost identical way of playing.
Since taking over from the coaching duo Sami Hyypia and Sascha Lewandowski in the summer of 2014, Schmidt has turned Bayer from a functional team of traditional, physical players into something that best resembles a mix of Jürgen Klopp’s Borussia Dortmundside of the not‑too‑distant past and what Guardiola implemented at Bayern.
Rather than give a flashy name to his style of play, Schmidt laughs and simply suggests that his side are at their best when the other team are uncomfortable. Rather than tweak his tactics for each match, he believes his team should play in a way that demands their opponents play Leverkusen’s kind of football. Not the other way round.
“We’re happy when the game is intense,” Schmidt says with a confident smile. “Even against teams that are supposedly better than us, like Bayern Munich
or Barcelona last season in the Champions League, we try and make them play our football – that’s what we demand of our opponents, and if it works we normally win the game.
“I look at teams and I know what the manager is like and what kind of football they like to play. I’m excited about the comparison and I’m looking forward to seeing how we handle the situation. These two games against Tottenham will be a huge challenge for us.”
Schmidt – unlike Pochettino – did not have a very successful playing career. He was an attacking midfielder who spent a large chunk of his days in the regional semi-professional leagues of Germany’s north Rhine-Westphalia while also working as an engineer. “I never wanted to be a football manager,” he says when asked to recount the early days of his career. “It was a hobby to begin with.”
Yet while that hobby may have began as a coach at the age of 37 at Delbrücker SC, it quickly developed into a full coaching role at Preussen Münster, Paderborn and then Red Bull Salzburg. Within eight years Schmidt went from part-time player-coach to full-time leader of a side expected to win the Austrian Bundesliga.
Roger Schmidt talks to his squad during training on Monday. Photograph: Martin Meissner/AP
At Salzburg he met the sporting director Ralf Rangnick, who shared Schmidt’s love for attacking football. “We exchanged a lot of ideas and worked well together for two years,” Schmidt says as he looks back on the league title the side won only one year after his arrival. “At the end of it, a football that was even more extreme than what Ralf knew from Hoffenheim was born.”
His impressive work in Austria did not go unnoticed and after only two seasons Schmidt was packing his bags for Leverkusen. There he finished fourth in this first season, third in his second and is widely expected to challenge Thomas Tuchel’s Borussia Dortmund for second place this time. Bayer have had an uneven start to the season and are currently 10th in the Bundesliga but they did beat Dortmund 2-0 at the start of October. “The way we’ve played has been a huge boost to our confidence,” Schmidt says when asked about the consequences of the results. “Very important, not just that we won but how we won. I think it was a deserved win against a very strong team and we played like people know Leverkusen can play.”
It is this insistence on the way his team play almost irrespective of the result that makes Schmidt stand out. Rather than become a product of their league, Leverkusen are playing the 49-year-old’s style of football in every game and competition. This is something Schmidt also sees in Tottenham. “Every country has its own culture, but all teams have become a bit more international recently,” the German coach suggests. “Many of Tottenham’s players are international, so is their manager. I think it’s more fluid. I don’t think you can say this is English football, this is Italian football. Instead this is Tottenham football.”
It will be a fascinating clash of philosophies at the BayArena on Tuesday. Both sides are desperate for a win with only a point separating them in second and third place of Group E and both will be confident of winning. Only one thing is guaranteed: it will be frenetic.
