
"It was a great event with 32 teams and we went close to lifting the cup," said Dreher after an exciting final. The final game in the tournament ended in a 2-2 draw with the Borussia Dortmund team scoring the opener on 20 seconds and levelling the scores with 20 seconds to play. That bookmarked Bayer 04 goals scored by Marcel Podszus and David Müller. The left-footed Müller also made his debut in the Bayer 04 Veterans team as did Tim Jerat. Dortmund then won 3-1 in the penalty shoot-out.
The group matches saw Bayer 04 clock up two wins (2-0 against Marador Füchse with goals from Müller and Ioannis Masmanidis, 3-2 against Dieter Hein with strikes from Podszus (2 ) and Hüzeyfe Dogan) plus a 0-0 draw with Team Baxter. The knock-out rounds brought victories against Rot-Weiss Essen in the Round of 16 (2-0/Jerat and Dogan), VDV-Vereinigung in the last eight (2-0/double from Masmanidis) plus Sonepar in the semis. Podszus and Masmanidis found the back of the net a 2-2 draw and the shoot-out ended in a 3-2.
The Veterans next game is on Saturday in Leverkusen. The sports ground on Tannenbergstraße hosts a match against a Bayer 04 fans eleven. The kick-off is at 14.15 CET.

Attacking midfielder Paulina Bartz is leaving Bayer 04 Leverkusen for good on a permanent move to Hamburger SV in the Google Pixel Women’s Bundesliga. The 21-year-old, who was on loan to the newly promoted side in the winter, originally had a contract to 2027.
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The Bayer 04 Football School opened in 2007 – now this successful programme is getting a new name and a new logo: with immediate effect, the Bayer 04 Football School powered by BarmeniaGothaer is becoming the Bayer 04 Football Academy powered by BarmeniaGothaer.
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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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The sustainable use of the BayArena seats removed as part of the current stadium upgrade has taken on a new dimension: Following on from numerous Bayer 04 fans receiving their ‘Undefeated Champions seats’ and various clubs and community organisations from Leverkusen and the wider region having collected the dismantled seats, Blau-Gelbe Kreuz e.V. also made their way to the BayArena recently. The German-Ukrainian aid organisation took away around 2,100 seats; in Ukraine, these will be used to upgrade the sports infrastructure of two clubs.
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