Granit Xhaka scored the only goal as a 10-man Bayer Leverkusen beat Kaiserslautern 1-0 to lift the German Cup in Berlin on Saturday and give the club the league-cup double.

Crowned Bundesliga champions in mid-April, Leverkusen were made to fight hard against their second-division opponents, playing with a man down after Odilon Kossounou’s second yellow late in the first half.

Xhaka scored the only goal in the German Cup final

Xhaka raised one leg to celebrate the goal with his teammates.

Xhaka’s 16th-minute goal, a beautiful long-range strike with his left foot, made the difference as Leverkusen bounced back from Wednesday’s Europa League final loss to Atalanta – which ended both their season-long unbeaten run at 51 games and their hopes of a treble.

Xhaka is 32 years old, famous at Gladbach during 2012-2016, before joining Arsenal. He won four titles in seven seasons with the “Gunners”, but won two cups in his first season with Leverkusen.

In this final, there was a time when the match was stopped at the beginning of the second half because the audience lit flares behind Leverkusen’s goal. However, this does not affect the psychology of Xhaka and his teammates. They completed a double of domestic titles, and are undefeated in Germany this season.

Alonso’s team ended the season with 53 matches, including 43 wins, 9 draws and only one defeat against Atalanta. Leverkusen scored 144 goals, conceded 42 times, won the Bundesliga and German Cup. They are only the sixth team to ever win the German double. And Alonso helped the team double the number of titles, because before this season, Leverkusen only had two cups, the 1988 UEFA Cup and the 1993 German Cup.