The team under head coach Gerardo Seoane face a quality side in last season's sixth-placed team in the Eredivisie who have established themselves in the top six of the Dutch league in recent years. German football fans will know about the former Hamburg and Bremen player Eljero Elia. The squad under the 49-year-old head coach René Hake is made up – as is usual in the Netherlands – of several experienced players (Urby Emanuelson, Adam Maher) as well as a lot of youngsters. The Utrecht goalkeeper is Eric Oelschlägel, twice a Super Cup winner with Borussia Dortmund and the only German player in the team.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the capacity at the Ulrich Haberland Stadium is 350 and all the tickets have already been sold. Fans were able to buy tickets for five euros with the proceeds going to the 'Leverkusen hilft' campaign organised by the Leverkusen community foundation, which is supporting victims of the floods financially.
Bayer 04 are broadcasting the second friendly for the Seoane team, with new signing Odilon Kossounou set to make his first appearance, live on the club's YouTube channel. The broadcast begins at 15.50 CEST with Niko Hartmann of Werkself Radio providing the commentary. Former Werkself keeper Ramazan 'Rambo' Özcan will share his assessment of the friendly and also talk about his new role as U19 goalkeeping coach at Bayer 04 at half-time.
HERE is the link to the live stream on YouTube.
Strengthening the Bayer 04 Leverkusen youth teams: Konstantinos Kotsifakis will join the Werkself from Bundesliga 2 club Hertha Berlin for the 2026/27 season, where he will be a permanent member of the Leverkusen U19 coaching set-up. The German-Greek will also take on an operational role in coaching the Bayer 04 Future Team. The 29-year-old was most recently head coach of the U17s at Hertha Berlin.
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Another award for the Bayer 04 head groundsman and staff: After coming top in the 2021/22, 2022/23 and 2024/25 seasons, the BayArena pitch came second in the Bundesliga Pitch of the Year ranking for the 2025/26 season. VfL Wolfsburg secured the top spot this year, with TSG Hoffenheim in third place.
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Opening opponents, derby weekends, the opponents in the season finale: This information and more will be available to Bayer 04 fans on Thursday, 2 July, when the 2026/27 Bundesliga fixture list is published.
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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 personal 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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