Promoted to the Bundesliga only recently, SV Elversberg had already described reaching the top flight as a moon landing. Looking ahead to the club’s first-ever Bundesliga match, coach Vincent Wagner said the small Saarland side now wanted to set off on a mission to Mars.

Up to this point, SpVgg’s launch into that so-called Mars mission could hardly have gone any better. In front of around 10,000 supporters in a sold-out stadium, the promoted side raced into a 2-0 lead against Bayer Leverkusen after only eight minutes.

Following an energetic opening, Lukas Petkov netted the first Bundesliga goal in the club’s history. The assist came from none other than Leverkusen loanee Onyeka in the 8th minute.

And the home side were not done there. Just a minute later, a disastrous misplaced pass from Tapsoba, who had already looked far from convincing for the opening goal, was punished by Cole Campbell, who took full advantage and drilled a left-footed effort into the far corner to make it 2-0.

In doing so, Elversberg made history. According to Sky, no promoted team had ever before gone 2-0 up so quickly in its first match of a Bundesliga season.

Even after 20 minutes, the Werkself still looked to have no answer. The shot count at that stage stood at 7-0 in favour of the home side.

Once the teams returned for the second half, the surreal evening continued immediately. David Mokwa also scored his first-ever top-flight goal, making it 3-0 in the 46th minute.

So far, the promoted side have known exactly how to leave Leverkusen shell-shocked and are enjoying an extraordinary start to their debut Bundesliga campaign. It is fair to say very few would have predicted this.

At least Patrik Schick spared Leverkusen the humiliation of failing to score, pulling one back for 1-3 in the 77th minute, before Kofane reduced the deficit again to 2-3 in stoppage time.