Bayer Leverkusen complete undefeated domestic season as Granit Xhaka downs Kaiserslautern in DFB-Pokal final

Granit Xhaka scored the lone goal as the winners held on after going down to 10 men

BERLIN -- If it wasn't quite the history they hoped to make on Wednesday morning, it was not bad going for Bayer Leverkusen either. Fifty two and one, the first German double winners to go through an entire domestic campaign without defeat. That there was no Europa League title to go with it should barely dull the triumph for a club that has so often borne witness to the glory of others.

Victory was more hard fought than it might have been given the occasion but playing down to 10 men for more than half of the DFB Pokal gave Germany a chance to see a different side to Leverkusen. Xabi Alonso's men went 51 without loss primarily because of the quality of their players, tactics and coaching. But even teams with all those qualities don't do what Leverkusen nearly did. You need a bit of bloody-mindedness to pair with your prime cut of Granit Xhaka walloping.

Not that many would have expected Kaiserslautern, champions of Germany in relatively recent memory but more recently battling to stave off the drop from 2. Bundesliga, to pose any great challenge to Leverkusen's bid for domestic invincibility. The pre-match tifo -- a red devil engulfed in smoke, a volcano billowing behind him -- warned of fire and brimstone. The representatives of the Westkurve certainly delivered that but when a shot on Lukas Hradecky's goal was cause for the lighting of eight flares, you sensed that the Kaiserslautern faithful might have known from the off that there would not be much to celebrate against the champions.