It took SV Elversberg all of nine minutes to turn the URSAPHARM-Arena an der Kaiserlinde into a place of pure delirium. By the time the visitors had drawn breath, they were two goals down and staring at an afternoon that would unravel further still. This was not supposed to be the script. Bayer Leverkusen arrived as the heavyweight, the name, the expectation — and left with nothing but a scoreline that flattered a comeback which never quite arrived.

The final reckoning read SV Elversberg 3, Bayer Leverkusen 2, but the numbers barely capture the swing of it. For an hour and more this was a rout in the making, a home side playing with the fearlessness of a team with nothing to lose and everything to prove. Then came the late storm, two goals in the closing quarter that had the hosts clinging on, hearts in mouths, until the whistle finally set them free.

In the Bundesliga table it registers as a statement and a warning in equal measure. Elversberg climb to fourth on three points, their first win banked in emphatic fashion. Leverkusen, meanwhile, sit fourteenth on nothing at all, a second defeat's worth of alarm bells already ringing after just one match played.

A blistering opening

The tone was set inside eight minutes. Lukas Petkov collected possession outside the box, shifted onto his left foot and arrowed a shot into the bottom right corner, the finish carrying the certainty of a man who had rehearsed it a thousand times. Francis Onyeka supplied the pass, and the arena erupted at a lead nobody had dared predict.

There was no time to settle before it doubled. Sixty seconds later Cole Campbell drifted into the left side of the box and repeated the dose, another left-footed strike nestling into the same bottom-right corner. Two goals, two minutes, and a Leverkusen defence that looked as though it had been ambushed on the way to its own seats.

It was football played at a tempo the visitors simply could not live with. Elversberg pressed, harried and hunted in packs, refusing Leverkusen a moment to breathe or think. The early cushion did not invite them to sit; it emboldened them to keep coming, and the sense grew that this was a day when the underdog had decided the odds simply did not apply.

Mokwa buries the visitors

Whatever was said to Leverkusen at the interval evaporated within seconds of the restart. Straight from the second-half whistle Elversberg struck again, Petkov turning creator this time with a cross that David Mokwa converted from very close range into the bottom left corner. Three-nil, forty-six minutes gone, and the contest looked comprehensively over.

It was the goal of a team utterly assured in what they were doing. Petkov's involvement in two of the three underlined an afternoon of sustained influence, the forward at the heart of everything sharp and dangerous about the hosts. Mokwa's finish was a poacher's reward for the collective ambush, arriving where a striker must arrive to punish the slightest hesitation.

For Leverkusen, the third was a body blow that briefly emptied the fight from their limbs. A side of their standing does not expect to be three down before the game's midpoint, least of all against newly promoted opposition. The scoreboard told a story of a hierarchy turned upside down, and the visitors had no immediate answer to the humbling.

Leverkusen's late fury

To their credit, Leverkusen did not simply fold. On seventy-seven minutes Patrik Schick gave them a lifeline, meeting Ibrahim Maza's delivery following a corner and steering a right-footed finish into the bottom right corner. Suddenly the crowd's roar carried an edge of nerves, and a game that had felt settled crackled back into uncertainty.

The pressure built and the anxiety spread through the home ranks. In the first minute of stoppage time Christian Kofane made it three-two, a right-footed strike from the centre of the box lashed high into the net. One goal in it now, and the closing seconds stretched into an agony for the hosts who had spent an hour in command.

But there was to be no final twist. Elversberg dug in, saw out the frantic remnants of the contest and held their nerve where a lesser side might have crumbled. The relief at the whistle was as loud as the joy had been at the start — a hard lesson learned about how quickly a comfortable lead can shrink, and a first Bundesliga win secured all the same.

What it means

For Elversberg, this is the kind of result that seasons are built upon. Fourth in the table, three points on the board, and a marquee scalp to prove they belong at this level. The performance carried more than mere effort; it carried craft, ambition and a ruthlessness in front of goal that the early scorers embodied so vividly. Confidence, so precious to a promoted club, will now flow through the squad.

There will be a lesson tucked inside the celebration, too. Surrendering two goals in the final quarter is the sort of detail that can prove costly against sharper opponents, and the coaching staff will want that late wobble ironed out before it becomes a habit. Yet no amount of caveat can dim a first win delivered against opposition of Leverkusen's pedigree.

For Bayer Leverkusen, the questions come thick and fast. Fourteenth and pointless after two defeats, they have conceded five and let a game slip that punished every early lapse. The late rally offers a flicker of character to cling to, evidence that the goals are in the side even if the defensive discipline is not. But a season cannot be salvaged in stoppage time alone, and their recovery must begin in earnest before the deficit hardens into something heavier.