
He experienced his biggest sporting success with FC Köln winning the German league title in 1962 and 1964. He earned 15 international caps for Germany and played in the 1962 World Cup in Chile. Leo Wilden also made his mark on Leverkusen.
Wilden joined the Werkself in 1966 and was one of the key players in the team under coach Theo Kirchberg in his second season at Leverkusen when they comfortably won the Regional League West title and thereby qualified for the Bundesliga play-offs. The Bayer team just missed out on making it into Germany's top flight when they finished second behind Kickers Offenbach. "We sensed promotion and were hungry for it," said Leo Wilden back then after a season that inspired euphoria in football fans in Leverkusen.
The defender hung up his boots at the age of 33 but continued to work for Bayer 04. In 1971, Wilden was the deputy to the football chairman Dr. Jürgen Schwericke and he worked in that role under the Bayer Cross up to 1973.
A profile of Leo Wilden, that appeared in July of last year marking his 85th birthday, is HERE.

The Bayer 04 Women welcome FC Carl Zeiss Jena to the Ulrich Haberland Stadium on Sunday night in a white retro look - and in a unique Bayer 04 ‘50 Years of Fan Clubs’ special edition jersey. In sporting terms, head coach Roberto Pätzold's team will face the Bundesliga's bottom team at 18:30 CET looking to keep their chances of third place in the table alive with six games left to play.
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Bayer 04 Leverkusen will have to manage without the two strikers in the immediate future. Caroline Kehrer suffered a torn ligament in her right knee and Amy Wrigge tore her cruciate ligament.
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The #B04eSports players now have the next chance to win a trophy. After their elimination in the quarter-finals of the VBL Club Championship Final 2025/26, the German club championship, Marc and Sean Landwehr will compete with seven other teams in the finals of the DFB-ePokal 2026 with prize money totalling €65,000. The "highly motivated" Leverkusen team will face the defending champions FOKUS with well-known influencer Elias ‘EliasN97’ Nerlich in the quarter-finals in Frankfurt on Friday, 20 March (from 18:15 CET). The semi-finals and final will be played on Saturday, 21 March.
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Bayer 04 host Bayern Munich in the semi-finals of the 2025/26 DFB Pokal. The tie will be played on Wednesday, 22 April 2026, at the BayArena with the kick-off at 20:45 CEST. Information on ticket sales.
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Hopes were high but disappointment was evident at the end of the second leg of the Round of 16 of UEFA Champions League 2025/26 with the Werkself losing 2-0 to clinical hosts Arsenal after a 1-1 draw in the first leg. Although this marks the end of the journey in the UCL this term the realisation remains that Bayer 04 are "not as far away as it might feel right now", as head coach Kasper Hjulmand said after the game. The Werkself review.
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