Mesut Özil (Arsenal) gave the World Cup winners of 2014 the lead on 11 minutes in Klagenfurt on Saturday night before the Austrians, coached by former Bayer 04 player and full of Bundesliga stars, turned the game round in the second half – much to the annoyance of Joachim Löw: "I'm disappointed with the defeat as we didn't do a lot of what we set out to. We had a decent first half but then we increasingly lost our way and nothing went right after that," said the Germany coach after the game. Martin Hinteregger (FC Augsburg) levelled on 53 minutes with Alessandro Schöpf (FC Schalke) putting the hosts ahead on 69 minutes.
The match kicked off at 19.43 instead of 18.00 due to severe weather conditions with the fixture briefly under threat of being abandoned. Leverkusen's Julian Brandt started on the right side of midfield but the 22-year-old failed to convert chances on 20 and 39 minutes thereby missing the chance to score his second goal in his fourteenth international appearance before being replaced by Timo Werner on 67 minutes. "I was determined to do my best. I could have put one or two chances away," said Brandt. The Werkself number ten is relaxed ahead of the announcement of the final Germany squad: „"I'm relatively relaxed and I'll wait and see what happens on Monday."
Brandt was not the only Werkself player to appear in front of the 30,000 crowd at the Wörthersee Stadium. The hosts were skippered by Julian Baumgartlinger in defensive midfield for the full 90 minutes and Aleksandar Dragovic , recently on loan at Leicester City, played in a back three. Both were able to celebrate the first Austria win against Germany since 1986. "The decisive factor was we wanted it more in the second half," was the verdict of Austria captain Baumgartlinger.
In the previous game against RB Leipzig in December last year, the Werkself turned came from behind to win 3-1 and further improved Leverkusen's already strong record against the Red Bulls. Montrell Culbreath stood out with his first goal on his debut for the Black and Reds. While the 18-year-old would certainly like to score a second goal against Leipzig on Saturday night, the attack-minded visitors come to the BayArena in confident mood after five Bundesliga victories in a row. The Nordkurve12 supporters group knows the Werkself will therefore once again be reliant on the vociferous support of the fans, and has once again called for the ‘Finally Red’ campaign in the run-in. Today’s matchday news.
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Video games manufacturer Electronic Arts (EA), together with the German Football League (DFL), announced the top male and female selections for the 2025/26 Bundesliga season this week. Bayer 04 striker Vanessa Fudalla is in the starting eleven of the women's "Team of the Season". Alejandro Grimaldo and Aleix Garcia have been selected as bench players in the men's team.
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This special event showed once again how strong Bayer 04 are as a team: As part of ‘BarmeniaGothaer gives joy’, the Werkself players Edmond Tapsoba, Ibrahim Maza and Christian Kofane supported the sale of individually designed T-shirts for a good cause at the Fanwelt on Thursday. Several hundred fans came to take part in the charity campaign. Leverkusen's main sponsor BarmeniaGothaer donated the proceeds to the Fondation Edmond Tapsoba, which helps people in Tapsoba's home country of Burkina Faso in their challenging everyday lives.
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With three games to play before the end of the season, the Bayer 04 Women can break one record and equal another at SGS Essen. After three wins on the bounce, coach Roberto Pätzold's team are aiming to maintain the chance of third place in Sunday’s away game (14:00 CEST, Stadion an der Hafenstraße).
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Rüdiger Vollborn has been at the club for 40 years, he holds the record number of Bundesliga appearances for the club (401) and is the only Bayer 04 player to have won both the UEFA Cup (1988) and the DFB Pokal (1993). And the Berliner stayed with the Werkself after ending his impressive playing career as he worked as a goalkeeping coach for the following nine years. Vollborn now works under the Bayer Cross as a fan liaison officer and club archivist. Since February 2021, the personalised Black and Red lexicon takes Werkself fans under the heading of 'Rudi recounts...' on a brief trip through the history of Bayer 04 every month…
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