Immediately before kick-off, the managing directors Fernando Carro and Rudi Völler plus sporting director Simon Rolfes will honour the brothers Lars and Sven Bender for their services to the Werkself. The twins have decided to end their impressive careers next week at the end of the current Bundesliga season.
Sven Elsinger also ends his time at Leverkusen. The head of the physiotherapy section leaves Bayer 04 after 13 years to concentrate on his practice back home in Hessen.
Bayer 04 are saving a special accolade for Lars Bender for a later date. After twelve years in a Leverkusen shirt, including five as captain, the 32-year-old Bender has been named a Werkself honorary captain. "We will only make the official presentation when we can hopefully have spectators back at the BayArena next season and give Lars the celebratory and emotional stage he deserves," said Rudi Völler.
Lars Bender will then join Rüdiger Vollborn, Carsten Ramelow, Ulf Kirsten, Bernd Schneider, Simon Rolfes and Stefan Kießling as the seventh honorary captain at Bayer 04 Leverkusen. "It is difficult to imagine a professional footballer having greater identification with a club than Lars does with Bayer 04 Leverkusen. His loyalty and his attitude over the years were exceptional. We owe huge gratitude to Lars," declared Fernando Carro.
Ahead of the home game against Union Berlin, Lars Bender sends an emotional message to the Bayer 04 family in the BayArena Aktuell magazine. Click HERE for the free digital edition.
Bayer 04 have agreed a loan move for U19s striker Ken Izekor to join Bundesliga 2 club Eintracht Braunschweig on loan for the rest of the 2025/26 season.
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After Leverkusen's eSports team spectacularly won the first showdown in the history of the VBL Club Championship last year, two rather sobering editions followed with two early exits. Now, in Showdown Four, cousins Marc and Sean Landwehr have once again made it into the offline knockout phase. And in this phase, Bochum awaits on Monday, 2 February (live on the VBL's Twitch channel from 16:00 CET). Here's a look at their opponents and what might happen next.
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The Werkself were impressive in the 3-1 win against Eintracht Frankfurt with clinical finishing and a first half "at a high level" that head coach Kasper Hjulmand draws a lot of positives from. The same should apply to Arthur, who scored for the first time in the Bundesliga. Edmond Tapsoba, for his part, was happy about his 250th appearance in a Bayer 04 jersey. "I think we're slowly finding our feet again," said goalscorer Malik Tillman, summing up the performance. The Werkself review.
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