Leverkusen 2-1 Freiburg: Maza and Schick turn the tide as pressure peaks late

Bayer Leverkusen ended Freiburg's unbeaten start to the Bundesliga season with a 2-1 win at the BayArena on 18 October 2026, and the manner of the comeback said as much about the hosts' growing attacking identity under Carles Martínez as it did about Freiburg's resilience. Derry Scherhant had put the visitors ahead in the 14th minute, finishing from a Philipp Treu assist, but Ibrahim Maza levelled five minutes later from a Patrik Schick pass, and Schick won it in the 76th minute from a Maza assist. The result pulled Leverkusen level on 13 points with Freiburg, behind them on goal difference, and tightened the cluster near the top behind Bayern Munich.

The headline fact belongs to Schick. He became the first Leverkusen player to score in each of the opening six matches of a Bundesliga season, and he is joint league top scorer on six goals. That is not a hot streak in isolation; it is the anchor of a new-look attack. Maza, named Man of the Match, said afterwards that "Schicki and I have a good chemistry", and the two combined for both goals. For a side that has turned over its squad — Kennet Eichhorn, Facundo Medina, Aleksa Damjanović, Guéla Doué, Miguel Gutiérrez and Luca Erlein arriving, with Exequiel Palacios among the departures — having a reliable scoring axis this early matters.

The raw numbers tell a story that the scoreline alone hides. Leverkusen finished with 49 per cent possession to Freiburg's 51, and only 12 shots to Freiburg's 11. On those figures alone, this looks like a narrow, even contest. The expected goals say otherwise: 1.63 to 1.06, with 1.52 of Leverkusen's coming from open play. Shots on target were 5-2 in the hosts' favour, and big chances 3-2. Freiburg scored first, and the evidence does not support any claim that Leverkusen dominated the opening period. What the match data does show is that the hosts' attacking pressure peaked after half-time, a pattern visible in the momentum graph on ESPN's match page, which tracks how pressure varied across the game.

Set against Leverkusen's earlier 2026/2027 matches, this was a quieter attacking display in volume terms: 12 shots here against an average of 20.6, 16 touches in the opposition box against an average of 37.0, 4 corners against an average of 7.4, and 1.63 xG against an average of 2.91. That context makes the second-half surge more interesting, not less. Martínez made five changes from the midweek Europa League outing, restoring Schick, Afonso Moreira, Moussa Diaby, Jarell Quansah and Facundo Medina. Whether the post-break lift was a deliberate adjustment or simply Freiburg tiring is a question the next matches will answer; the sources confirm the personnel changes, not the tactical reasoning behind them.

Freiburg arrived top of the table with a club-record 13 points from five games, and Julian Schuster made one change, Keisuke Gotō replacing the suspended Yuito Suzuki. They leave level on points with Leverkusen but ahead on goal difference, and they host Bayern Munich next weekend — a fixture that will test how much of this defeat was fatigue and how much was Leverkusen's growing control.

The small-sample caveat is real. Leverkusen's 13 points from six games under Martínez, at 2.17 per game, sit well below the 2.65 per game Xabi Alonso's side managed across 2023/2024, but six matches is far too short to call a trend. What is already clear is that the Maza–Schick partnership is the team's main scoring route, and that Leverkusen's best attacking spells are arriving later in matches. Whether that becomes a durable pattern across a congested fixture list is the question that will define their season.