Leverkusen erases a Leipzig goal via VAR and rolls to a 2-0 win

VAR chalked off a Christopher Nkunku goal in the 33rd minute, and that single call ended up shaping the entire afternoon at the BayArena. Bayer 04 Leverkusen made the most of the reprieve, striking right before halftime and then putting the game away in the second half: 2-0 over RB Leipzig, with Patrik Schick and Miguel Gutierrez doing the damage.

The match had started evenly, with Leipzig actually the sharper side in the opening minutes. Neil El Aynaoui and Ezechiel Banzuzi both tested Mark Flekken without success, and Willi Orbán forced a solid save from the home goalkeeper off a corner. But the moment that flipped the mood of the game came in the 33rd minute, when Nkunku poked the ball into the net and the referee pointed to the center circle, only for the VAR review to wave it off: Bayer 04 Leverkusen 0, RB Leipzig 0 stayed on the scoreboard.

Leipzig never quite recovered from that blow. Ten minutes later, in the 43rd, Leverkusen found the breakthrough it had been chasing all half: Miguel Gutierrez whipped in a cross and Patrik Schick finished with his right foot, low and inside the far post, for the 1-0 that stood at the break.

The counterattack that sealed it

To start the second half, Leipzig kept pushing, with Neil El Aynaoui forcing a big save from Flekken and Tidiam Gomis firing a couple of efforts wide. But Leverkusen bided its time and struck on a lethal counterattack: in the 56th minute, Miguel Gutierrez finished with his left foot, again low and inside the far post, for the 2-0 that would hold up as the final score.

With a two-goal cushion, Leverkusen managed the rest of the match comfortably. Ibrahim Maza, Afonso Moreira and Schick all had chances to add to the tally, while Leipzig tried to respond by sending on Andrija Maksimovic, Nicolas Seiwald and Samba Konaté, but none of them seriously troubled Flekken down the stretch.

By the numbers

The stat sheet reflects the home side's control, especially in attack:

The gap in clear-cut chances, four to one, tells much of the story of how the match unfolded, and it's echoed in the post-match xG figures too: 2.432 for Leverkusen against 1.042 for Leipzig, a number that confirms the home side created more and better chances over the 90 minutes, though it's worth remembering this is an estimate calculated after the fact rather than a pre-match projection.

Before kickoff, our model gave Leverkusen a 54% chance of winning, against 24% for a draw and 22% for a Leipzig win, with expected goals of 2.05 for the home side and 1.29 for the visitors. The final result landed pretty close to that forecast, both in the scoreline and in the edge we projected for the home team.

What it means in the standings

In the Bundesliga table, Bayer 04 Leverkusen came into the match with 7 points from 4 games (two wins, a draw and a loss), sitting fifth, while RB Leipzig had 6 points from the same number of games (two wins and two losses), in ninth. The gap between the two clubs was just a single point before kickoff, and today's result stretches that distance further apart.

For Leverkusen, the win came down to making the most of its two clinical shots on target, while Leipzig is left to wonder what might have been had that Nkunku goal counted. VAR had the final say on the play that opened the door to everything that followed.