Stadium announcer Petra ‘Pitti’ Dahl opened the event and acted as the presenter for the evening. After the sponsors were welcomed by the Bayer 04 directors Fernando Carro and Rudi Völler, there was the informative part of the event. In between the three courses served up, last season and the recently completed training camp in Zell am See in Austria were reviewed before coach Peter Bosz, sporting director Simon Rolfes and captain Lars Bender came on stage for an entertaining round of discussions.
Then everybody was on their feet for the table football tournament. The sponsors, Werkself players and the Bayer 04 management were divided up into teams and first played each other in a group stage of four rounds with games of four minutes each way. The Bayer 04 reporter for the visually handicapped, Björn Nass, provided a live commentary for the semi-finals and the final. The 'La Parisienne' team, made up of the two Werkself players Jonathan Tah and Moussa Diaby plus Dr Andreas Eurich, CEO at Barmenia, were the winners. In a shower of confetti, Stefan Kießling presented the trophy to the victors and the evening finished with relaxed discussions and networking.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen will have to manage without centre-back Edmond Tapsoba in the coming weeks. The Burkina Faso international returned to the Werkself from the Africa Cup of Nations in Morocco with a muscle injury.
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The Werkself are away to Hamburg SV at the end of the Hinrunde in the 2025/26 Bundesliga campaign. The match at the newly promoted club is on Tuesday night, 13 January (kick-off: 20:30 CET). Ahead of the first encounter with HSV since 2018, Kasper Hjulmand spoke about the strengths of the opponents, lessons learnt from the home defeat against VfB Stuttgart and provided a squad update.
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In Germany, the temperatures are currently around zero, leaving even professional footballers freezing - but not the Bayer 04 Women. Roberto Pätzold's team have fled the cold to the south and are preparing for the second half of the season at a training camp in the Algarve, almost 2,000 kilometres away from home as the crow flies. The Leverkusen squad landed in Faro on Saturday morning and have already completed the first three training sessions over the weekend.
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It was a disappointing Saturday night. The Werkself lost 4-1 to VfB Stuttgart to start the new year on Bundesliga matchday 16 in 2025/26, a result that left both players and fans disappointed. "We played without any passion," said Alejandro Grimaldo honestly afterwards. Teammate Jarell Quansah was even more self-critical, emphasising: "We were miles off it in the first half. You can't put in a performance like that, especially in front of our own fans and I can only apologise to them, to be honest." Read on for the reaction, facts and stats from the clash with VfB Stuttgart in the Werkself review.
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