Hoffenheim 3-0 Leverkusen: the scoreline flattered the visitors' collapse

Hoffenheim beat Bayer Leverkusen 3-0 at the SNP Arena on Sunday, but the scoreline tells only the last twenty minutes of the story. The first half ended goalless in heavy rain, and the opening goal did not arrive until the 79th minute, when Andrej Kramarić converted a penalty after Leverkusen captain Edmond Tapsoba dragged down Fisnik Asllani inside the box. Alexander Prass made it 2-0 in the 89th minute from a Kramarić assist, and Max Moerstedt added a third in stoppage time. Prass was sent off in the dying minutes.

The result ended Leverkusen's five-game unbeaten run and gave Hoffenheim their first Bundesliga clean sheet of 2026/27. Pre-match, Leverkusen were fourth with 13 points and Hoffenheim 14th with six, so the table said this was an away side closing on the top and a home side looking over its shoulder. The chance volume said something else entirely.

Hoffenheim had 42 per cent of the ball and 20 shots to Leverkusen's nine. They put six on target to Leverkusen's one, and created four big chances to none. Their expected goals figure was 3.46; Leverkusen's was 0.62. This was not a smash-and-grab in which a low-block side nicked a goal against the run of play. Hoffenheim carried the larger share of the chance volume from the start, and the three goals were the finish of that work rather than a sudden break from it.

The contrast with Leverkusen's own season is stark. Across their earlier 2026/27 matches in all competitions, Carles Martínez's side averaged 20.2 shots, 2.91 expected goals and 32 touches in the opposition box. Here they managed 9.0 shots, 0.62 expected goals and 20 touches in the box. Their corners dropped to 3.0 against an earlier average of 6.2. Their goals minus expected goals for this match was -0.62, against an average of 0.0 across those earlier games. One match is not a trend, and the current-season record is too short to call one, but the gap between this performance and their own baseline is wide enough to note.

Both clubs had played Europa League matches the preceding Thursday. Hoffenheim made four changes to the side that beat Lyon; Leverkusen made six, with Mark Flekken, Edmond Tapsoba, Miguel Gutiérrez, Moussa Diaby, Ibrahim Maza and Nathan Tella all starting. Whether that workload explains the drop in Leverkusen's second-half intensity is a question the next matches will answer, not something this single result settles.

Leverkusen's league record under Martínez so far is 4W 1D 1L, 2.17 points per game over six games. That is a strong start by most standards, and it sits alongside a summer of significant turnover: Kennet Eichhorn, Facundo Medina, Aleksa Damjanović, Guéla Doué, Miguel Gutiérrez and Luca Erlein arrived, while Exequiel Palacios, Andrea Natali, Ferdinand Pohl, Matěj Kovár, Alejo Sarco and Emmanuel Chigozie Owen departed. For context, Xabi Alonso's 2023/24 side took 2.65 points per game across a 28W 6D 0L season. The comparison is not a like-for-like one, but it frames how high the recent standard at this club has been.

For Hoffenheim, the win converts a tight, chance-heavy contest into a convincing one and delivers a first league clean sheet of the campaign. The open questions are the ones the next few weeks will answer: how much of Hoffenheim's chance volume came before the 79th minute, what the disciplinary consequences of Prass's red card will be, and whether Leverkusen's attacking numbers return to their earlier level or whether this was the first sign of a deeper problem.