Bayer Leverkusen dismantled RB Leipzig 4-1 on Sunday evening, with Patrik Schick scoring a hat-trick to move his side into fourth place in the Bundesliga and push Hoffenheim out of the Champions League positions in the process.
The result arrived as a particularly cruel blow for Hoffenheim, who had spent much of the afternoon believing they had secured the final likely Champions League spot. As the Guardian reports, Andrei Kramaric — the club's all-time record scorer — had put in a dominant display against Stuttgart, netting twice to bring his tally to 158 goals for the club and moving Hoffenheim ever closer to an unlikely return to European football's premier competition. The mood inside the PreZero Arena was celebratory.
It curdled in stoppage time. Stuttgart's Tiago Tomás equalised in the 95th minute to deny Hoffenheim even the afternoon's win, and by the time Leverkusen had finished their business against Leipzig in the early evening fixture, Kramaric's side had been displaced entirely. They now sit sixth, separated from the top four by goal difference alone — as do fifth-placed Stuttgart. Three clubs, one goal difference column, and a final round of fixtures to come.
For Kramaric, the timing was particularly sharp. He had signed a two-year contract extension just two days before Sunday's fixture, describing Hoffenheim as his second home. His post-match assessment, according to the Guardian, was stark: this was perhaps the most difficult moment of his career. That a player who has given the club so much would feel it so acutely speaks to how close Hoffenheim believed they were to achieving something genuinely improbable.
Leverkusen's performance, by contrast, had the look of a side playing with freedom. Schick's hat-trick against Leipzig was clinical and emphatic, the 4-1 scoreline leaving no room for ambiguity about who deserved the three points. Whether that result ultimately proves decisive in the race for fourth will depend on what happens across the final round of fixtures, with positions four, five, and six still separated by nothing more than goal difference. The mathematics remain open. The nerves, at Hoffenheim at least, will be considerable.