Leverkusen sinks Celje with own goal and Medina screamer in Europa League opener

An own goal opened the door and a finish from Facundo Medina sealed it: Bayer 04 Leverkusen beat Celje 2-0 at the BayArena, in a Europa League match that the German side controlled from start to finish.

The first blow came in the 14th minute, amid a flurry of corners and home shots. Off a corner kick, Edmond Tapsoba tried a header and the ball deflected off Svit Seslar into his own net. What followed was more of the same: Leverkusen kept pressing with Aleix García as the main creative threat, firing off several shots that ran into the Celje goalkeeper's resistance, but the second goal took a while to arrive.

It wasn't until the 73rd minute, again off a corner, that Facundo Medina stepped up to finish with his left foot from the center of the box, assisted by Aleix García, to make it a final 2-0. Celje, who had a couple of chances through Benjamin Verbic before halftime, including one that went just wide, never managed to seriously threaten the Leverkusen goal and had no answer in the closing stretch.

The numbers behind the dominance

The stats confirm what was seen on the field: a Leverkusen side that controlled possession and piled on scoring attempts.

Seventeen shots to five is a telling gap, and it shows up too in the xG calculated after the fact from the match's shots: 2.14 for Leverkusen against 1.044 for Celje. That visiting number is worth noting given how little Celje troubled the scoreboard, though it's worth remembering this is a post-match estimate rather than a measure of only the clearest chances.

The result, in fact, isn't too far from what we projected beforehand: our preview gave Leverkusen a 56% chance of winning, against a 22% chance of a draw and another 22% chance of an away win, with expected goals of 2.22 for the home side and 1.36 for Celje. The final score ended up being even more emphatic, though consistent with the favoritism we gave the German club before kickoff.

On the substitutions front, Leverkusen made changes with the lead already in hand: Jarell Quansah, Afonso Moreira, Equi Fernández, Christian Kofane and Eliesse Ben Seghir all came on, looking to add fresh legs to maintain control. For Celje, Blaz Kramer and Matic Ivansek entered around the hour mark, and later Veton Tusha replaced an injured Verbic, while Papa Daniel got some minutes late on.

Where it leaves the standings

With this result, Leverkusen reached 3 points after their first match, with a goal difference of +2, sitting in third place in the league phase table, though with just one match played by every team, that table doesn't say much yet about real pecking order. Celje, meanwhile, are still without points after their opener, with a difference of -2. The gap between the two in the standings is, for now, 3 points.

It was a night where Leverkusen dictated terms early, benefited from a rival's own mistake to get ahead, and then finished the job with an individual piece of quality in the second half. For Celje, the takeaway is of a team that resisted as best it could, but lacked the tools to seriously threaten across the 90 minutes.