– We will be in the Champions League in the future and we have beaten both Milan gangs. We will be in the Cup in the future and we beat Bayern away. We are second in the Bundesliga and we are still fighting for the championship. You can’t be terribly disappointed and angry here, Lukas Hradecky laughed in an interview with Urheilu on Friday.
At the time of the interview, the star goalkeeper was driving from Bayer Leverkusen’s training center towards Düsseldorf and his home, where his German spouse and daughter, who is learning to walk these days, were waiting.
Freiburg will be visiting BayArena on Saturday evening. Leverkusen will then play their next Bundesliga match after a short winter break on January 10.
Hradecky gives his team a grade of 9+ for the season so far, although many consider the pharmaceutical factory through the club a disappointment.
Everything mirrors the fairytale season 2023-24, when Leverkusen roared undefeated to a crushing league title, advanced to the Europa League final and won the German Cup. The team has now lost a total of three matches in different competitions during the season and a half.
Bar high
– The fairy tale cannot continue for two years straight. If our season so far was not mirrored to last season, everyone would consider it a great success. Understandably, the bar has been set very high, but I’m asking for a bit of realism, the good-natured Hradecky, who is coming to Turku for a couple of days on Christmas vacation, laughed.
– Who can surpass the phenomenon called Bayer Leverkusen 2023–2024? Who would even know how to set a goal to pull off an undefeated season in the Bundesliga? We also knew that we cannot repeat what happened as it is. We also knew that we could win the championship again, but hardly in the same way.
The captain of Leverkusen and the A national team reminds us that last season the Werkself’s dominance in the final moments became a straightforward concept, when the team forged a string of goals at the end of regular time or in extra time.
This season, however, Leverkusen has lost four series points to Kiel and Bochum, who are very likely to be relegated from the Bundesliga, and lost at home against Leipzig from a 2-0 lead to 2-3.
Those were expensive points.
Raw logic
– Yes, if the four points had been taken from those goals, we would be level with Bayern. But in a way this is also the raw logic and justice of football.
– When last season we were the gang that scored goals all the time, then at some point the same goals are scored in our own net.
The numbers don’t lie: while Leverkusen conceded 20 goals in the entire Bundesliga last season, this season they had already conceded 15 in the first eight rounds. Since then, only five setbacks have accumulated in six matches.
– Our defense has definitely tightened up, there were obvious problems with it from the beginning of the season. I can’t say the reason. There has been no hovering or anything like that, there has been no sign of such a thing.
Bayer Leverkusen managed to keep last season’s team almost completely together. The club did not manage to make exactly the same exact purchases as last season:
– It’s not possible to get one every season Granit Xhaka, by Victor Boniface or Alejandro Grimaldo quality players in the group.
Hradecky has played for his employer a total of 17 times this season, 13 of them in the Bundesliga. The burden has seemed just right for the 35-year-old, whose Leverkusen contract expires in spring 2026.
The career is not ending
– I don’t know anything about the future except that my career won’t end then. We’ll see in time where it continues.
In the A national team, Hradecky plans to continue at least one more qualifying session aimed at the 2026 World Cup.
In this case, he is already playing for the fifth head coach of his A national team career. The Balloliitto is planning to name this in March.
– There is no view on the matter or the names per se. In the media, I have been following the discussion and speculation with names. I think that the association will perhaps ask some opinions from the most experienced players.
Even though the A-national team has been in deep trouble, there have been enough reasons to be happy for Finland’s leading soccer player in this field.
– Fortunately, some national teams have succeeded, Hradecky refers to the women’s A national team and the under-21 men’s national team that have reached the European Championship.
The goalkeeper, who was chosen as the Sportsman of the Year 2020, has a clear view of this time’s candidates, even though he is one of them himself.
– If Barkov (Aleksandrcaptain of the Florida Panthers and Stanley Cup champion) isn’t winning now, so when? Fantastic career and player.
During the Christmas break, Hradecky plans to relax. He hopes that the players of the team representing no less than 14 nationalities will head to their home countries for a while.
– Vacationing with reason will be greatly needed. I don’t understand how Premier League players hold their own his program, Hradecky refers to the very tight game pace of the series during the Christmas and New Year period.