
There was bad news in the morning session. Jedvaj held onto his left thigh after a sprinting drill just before the end of training and he left the pitch for the dressing room with a concerned look on his face. An MRI scan in the afternoon revealed the 22-year-old Croat had pulled a muscle and that may rule him out of the top game of matchday 26 against Gladbach. "It's annoying for Tin and it puts him and us back a bit. He's very flexible and can play as a central defender or full back and he's done both very well recently. But you can't do anything about it," said a clearly concerned Herrlich. How long the Bayer 04 head coach will have to manage without Jedvaj remains to be seen.
Both Charles Aránguiz (knee) and Sven Bender, who was substituted at half-time in the 2-1 win at Wolfsburg due to a back problem, have not trained with the squad this week. The duo worked on their own on Monday and Tuesday. "I'm very optimistic that Sven and Charly were able to play on Saturday. We want to take care of them and avoid taking any risks," said Herrlich in describing a "purely preventative measure."The same goes for the skipper Lars Bender and Wendell (private reasons) and they did not join in with the morning session on Tuesday.They did return to full training in the afternoon.

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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