The fairytale ended the way fairytales tend to: with the protagonists still standing, but exhausted. Leverkusen's unbeaten league title last season was a cultural event, the kind of romantic interruption German football desperately needed.

Twelve months on, the question is harder. Can Xabi Alonso's side resist the gravitational pull of the mean? Bayern, predictably, have rebuilt. Vincent Kompany has installed his pressing template and Harry Kane has done what Harry Kane does: scored a great many goals in a great many ways.

Leverkusen are second, three points back, and still unbeaten in their last eleven. The fairytale isn't over. It is just being rewritten in a more difficult genre.