Leverkusen officially champions of Germany, still in the hunt for a treble, and 5 league matches from immortality. Sky's the limit for Xabi Alonso.
Congratulations to Leverkusen!
Although I do like Bayern, it's good to see someone else finally win the Bundesliga for once, and frankly if I had to see someone else win, Leverkusen is the team I would have wanted to see do it (beyond Xabi Alonso having done a tremendous job, the Cologne area is the area I know best in Germany, I've been several times so I guess it's the closest thing to a "local" team for me in the Bundesliga lol).
And on that note, I think it's possible that Leverkusen may finally be a more sustainable longer term rival to Bayern than other challengers in my lifetime (Dortmund, Bremen, Schalke, Leipzig, etc) exactly due to the fact that it's a club from the Cologne area. I think part of the reason that Bayern had managed to dominate the Bundesliga so overwhelmingly for so long is exactly because it was the only big city club (and also the only club with a real pre-1990s history) in Germany that didn't go into severe decline in the 1990s (like for example Hamburg or FC Koln). I don't think it was ever going to be sustainable to have Bayern's main rivals be from such smaller cities.
Now finally, for the first time in decades, you have a challenger from one of Germany's main metropolitan areas.
