‘I’m still buzzing since last weekend and hopefully there’s more to come’

Like many others, the first time Bayer Leverkusen made any sort of impact on the life of Adrian Ferry was when they ousted both Liverpool and Manchester United on the way to reaching the 2001/02 Champions League final.

There, the team that included the likes of Oliver Neuville, Carsten Ramelow, Lúcio, Dimitar Berbatov and Michael Ballack would lose 2-1 to Real Madrid at Hampden Park in Glasgow, with Zinedine Zidane’s majestic sweeping volley a frequently re-run piece of footballing history.

Adrian, from Dreenan, Ballybofey, is the son of Sligo Rovers’ 1983 FAI winner Mick, who also had a spell in the early 1980s with Finn Harps, the club Adrian visits more than any other, whether as a supporter or volunteer.

Adrian Ferry on a tour of the BayArena, the home of Bayer Leverkusen

As a football-mad schoolboy, Adrian played Championship Manager, later known as Football Manager, which could pass hours, days and weeks.

Maybe, as a Harps supporter, Adrian, now 33 and a data analyst at Optum in Letterkenny, in his subconscious, loves an underdog and played as Bayer Leverkusen in the game, an incredibly in-depth football management simulation.

“I would’ve watched a lot of German football, which was aired on BT Sport at the time,” Adrian tells DonegalLive. “It was very interesting, very attacking, with great supporters, pyro and atmosphere and I decided to go to a game.”

In 1998, the German Football Association, the Deutscher Fußball-Bund, introduced the ‘50+1’ rule, in by every Bundesliga club is owned, by a majority, of its supporters. Fans are the priority and the sport is less corporate.

In 2015, Adrian and his friend Emmet Espey headed via Düsseldorf to Leverkusen, an industrial city of some 163,000 inhabitants in the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Region. He was immediately hooked, watching Leverkusen hammer Borussia Mönchengladbach 5-0, with Stefan Kiessling scoring twice and Javier Hernández, who would later play for Manchester United, scoring a second-half hat-trick.

Adrian Ferry and Christian Kurek at Xabi Alonso’s Bayer Leverkusen’s 5-0 victory over Union Berlin

“It was so different,” Adrian adds. “Going through these dark woods to the stadium and then the smoke bombs, the flares and the noise. It was unbelievable."

And so it began. Not every trip was as memorable but, at the same time, Adrian can recall them all. He’s now been at almost 50 times in all to see Leverkusen, both at the BayArena and away from home, domestically in Germany or to the likes of Ferencváros in Hungary, Spain’s Atletico Madrid and even visiting Glasgow’s big two, Celtic and Rangers.

“I joined a few Facebook groups and got to know travelling fans, as well as locals in Germany,” Adrian adds. “The most I’ve ever paid for a ticket is £27, which was as an away fan at Celtic. At Rangers, the tickets were £45 but Leverkusen paid £25 of each fan’s ticket. A home ticket is typically €16. It’s brilliant to only have to pay that to see some of the world’s best players and stadiums”.

With only a handful of supporters travelling to Germany for games from both Ireland and the UK, flights are accessible and, by and large, reasonable, as is accommodation.

Before this season, one of Adrian’s stand-out games was when he travelled with fellow Harps fan Mark McElchar for a 4-3 win over Borussia Dortmund in February 2020. Leverkusen scored twice in two minutes late on through Leon Bailey and Lars Bender to complete a thrilling comeback.

Xabi Alonso scored and helped Liverpool to success in the 2004/05 Champions League, defeating AC Milan on penalties in the final having come from three down to draw 3-3 at the Atatürk Olympic Stadium in Istanbul

That, though, has been topped now. Leverkusen were second-bottom when former Liverpool, Real Madrid and Spain midfield Xabi Alonso arrived in 2022, and on Sunday last became Bundesliga champions for the first time.

The five-time Bundesliga runners-up from ‘Neverkusen’ became winners once and for all. Prior to Alonso, Leverkusen had only lifted two major honours ever, the DFB-Pokal (German Cup) in 1993 and the 1988 Uefa Cup.

Even that 2002 side is remembered for what might have been. As well as losing the Champion’s League final that season, they were second in the German League and beaten in the final of the German Cup.

With this year’s league championship already in the bag, clinched in spectacular style in a 5-0 win over Werder Bremen on Sunday, Leverkusen are taking a 2-0 lead to West Ham United in the second leg of the Uefa Europa League quarter-final - with the final to be played at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium - and are through to the German Cup final, where they will face FC Kaiserslautern at the Olympiastadion Berlin next month. Leverkusen are still unbeaten in all competitions - some 43 games - this season.

“Leverkusen have a history of not winning so even this season, you were always careful and Bayern Munich tend to always win,” Adrian says of the traditional German powerhouse, who had won the previous 12 Bundesliga titles, a series last broken by current Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp in 2011/12 at Borussia Dortmund.

“Bayern had signed Harry Kane and he was going to take them to another level but Leverkusen kept getting results.”

The acid test would come in February, as Bayern came to the BayArena. This was it. Adrian made the trip and watched on as Alonso’s team were thoroughly dominant, showing their class to romp to a 3-0 win.

Adrian Ferry with the Skunks, all dressed up, at the Karneval for the Bayer Leverkusen clash against Bayern Munich at the BayArena in February

He celebrated with the Skunks, a selection of fans that meets before home matches at the Stadioneck, which is run by the independent fan association in Leverkusen, Nordkurve12. Adrian had also linked up with that same group, who enjoyed a friendly relationship with the supporters of Liverpool FC, a month beforehand in the north-west of England.

They traditionally take in a match, in the vicinity of Merseyside, and on January’s second Saturday of this year made the non-too-glamorous visit to Crewe Alexandra’s Gresty Road - now known as the Mornflake Stadium - for the League Two clash with Swindon Town.

That same day, Leverkusen faced a testing trip to Ausgurg so the group huddled around Adrian’s phone, before erupting when Exequiel Palacios scored a 94th-minute Leverkusen winner to seal a 1-0 win. Oh, and Crewe beat Swindon 2-1.

On a season of highs, Adrian points to that narrow victory at Augsburg and the dismantling of Bayern as the pivotal moments. Leverkusen romped home and Sunday’s victory against Bremen, as well as sealing the title, put them 16 points clear at the top with five league matches still to play.

“I didn’t make it on Sunday and with so much Premier League on television figured there might not be so many pubs showing German football,” Adrian says. “The scenes when they won made me quite emotional, as the crowd spilt onto the pitch for their first-ever title. I was delighted and also delighted for my friends, who I have got to know down the years going to Germany.”

As a secondary school student at St Columba’s in Stranorlar, Adrian did German for only a year, and says his ability with the language is “terrible”. But with Germans learning English from their formative years, he has made lots of friends on the trips and on a couple of occasions some of those friends made the return journey, coming to Finn Park.

Daniel Schlienkamp, Adrian Ferry, Alex Erbar and Andy Wunderlich at Finn Park

“Some got a good game and one didn’t,” Adrian says. “One was a 4-3 win against Cobh and the other a 1-0 defeat to Wexford Youths. But they enjoyed it. One of them, Michael Varutti, was travelling some 3,000 miles on a Lambretta scooter and stopped in Ballybofey! I took some friends on a bit of a road trip, going to Rathmullan and then Portsalon and it was clear skies and 25 degrees. Donegal looked amazing that day and they couldn’t get over it.”

Although the Bundesliga title is in the bag, Leverkusen’s season is far from done. And neither is Adrian’s. He is booked to go back to Germany once and maybe even twice, working around Harps fixtures, as well as keeping his fingers crossed for a Europa League final place in Dublin.

“It’s been a brilliant season and the football Leverkusen play is great to watch,” he says. “I actually backed Leverkusen to win the league in August, €10 at 50/1 so that helped a trip. I love German football and they are a club of the people, the team is such an important part of the city there. I’m still buzzing since last weekend and hopefully there’s more to come.”