31 games, 20 defeats: Leverkusen sack Studtrucker

Bayer 04 Leverkusen have run out of room for another defeat. Ben Zlatko Studtrucker was sacked today after 31 games in charge, a spell of six wins, five draws and 20 defeats that leaves the club 17th in the Bundesliga, with 14 points from 25 matches.

The arithmetic is stark: Leverkusen lost almost two games for every one they won under the German. Their recent form, DLWLL, offers no convincing counter-argument. The dismissal is a decision about the present as much as the record — a club still in the relegation places, with the season’s remaining work measured in points rather than promises.

There had been a brief reprieve in the public conversation around the club. On 25 February, World Soccer wrote that Markus Kölbl’s close-range winner against Bielefeld had given Leverkusen precious points and a little air above the drop zone. But that account was followed the same day by a preview of the meeting with SpVgg Greuther Fürth, with the sides only a point apart. The distance between relief and danger was always narrow; the current standing makes clear that it did not last.

Studtrucker had already made himself a contentious figure beyond Leverkusen. In January, he stood by criticism of Borussia Dortmund despite a poor result, while Narcís Hostench said he lacked respect. That dispute is not the reason for today’s decision, but it helps explain why his tenure became difficult to separate from the argument surrounding him. Results, though, provide the more direct account: 20 defeats, and a club still 17th.

For Leverkusen, the immediate need is now a change of direction, not a defence of the past. The club must find a way to turn its remaining league games into a stay in the Bundesliga; the dismissal itself changes nothing in the table. It does, however, mark the end of an experiment that brought too few wins to keep its manager in place.