In a time where there were no mobile phones, I had my first cordless phone, my hair was permed, the players wore sexy short shorts and there were positions known as libero as we prepared for the new season. There were two points for a win in the Bundesliga and there was a maximum of two substitutes per game. I can't exactly remember the goalkeeper rules back then but I definitely wasn't allowed to pick up a back pass.
To explain 1988, we have to go back a year to the 1986 – 87 season. In that season Bayer were league leaders for the first time on matchday three and remained so for another two games, we beat the great FC Bayern Munich 3-0 on matchday 12 at their ground, went back to the top of the table and finally ended the first half of the season with an impressive third place just two points behind Bayern and league leaders HSV. Things don't go so well in the second half of the season. We lost more and more ground and dropped to sixth place. That was not good enough to qualify for the UEFA Cup. We were reliant on HSV beating second division Stuttgart Kickers in the cup final. Thankfully they did that on 88 minutes with a free kick from Manni Kaltz and then an own goal for the final scoreline of 3-1. So we again qualified for the UEFA Cup as in the year before
We had three new players for the 1987/88 season: Ralf Falkenmayer, Klaus Täuber and Andrzej Buncol. Knut Reinhardt and Jean-Pierre de Keyser from the second team were awarded professional contracts and Bernd Dreher moved up to the first team squad as an amateur.
In the season preview from Kicker we were predicted to finish in the top five. I quote: "The Bayer players will have to manage that: They finished sixth twice in succession. The fans would definitely not be happy with a hat-trick. Standing still is often the same dropping back. Expectations have definitely risen. Transfer spending in the sum of over three million for the players Täuber, Falkenmayer and Buncol has played its part in that." Three million Deutschmarks, not euros. I admit: The Bundesliga season was poor. Very poor. Somehow we never really get going. But the UEFA Cup matches were all the better for that. And that's what it was all about in the following months. Our first UEFA Cup match was on 15 September 1987 so will look at the two matches against Austria Vienna next month.
The first Bundesliga matches were in August. A 1-0 win in the opener at the Ulrich Haberland Stadium against Waldhof Mannheim was followed by two draws. Then comes the Mönchengladbach week where we lost 2-1 twice at the Bökelberg in the league and in the cup. In the week between the two Gladbach games there was also a 3-1 home defeat against Eintracht Frankfurt and the atmosphere under the Bayer Cross was really bad in August 1987.
Hans Sarpei was born on 28 June 1976 in Tema, Ghana, and came to Germany with his parents at the age of three, where he grew up in Cologne. Even before he was born, his mother and father worked in Hamburg in the import-export sector. There they met an older man who introduced them to German culture and supported them. Out of gratitude, Hans was later given his first name, although this man died before he was born. Hans comes from a sporting family; his older brother Edward and his nephews Hans Nunoo Sarpei and Kingsley Sarpei were or are also professional footballers.
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On 3 June 1953, Hans-Josef (‘Sepp’) Kretschmann became the fifth coach in the history of Bayer 04 Leverkusen. Born in Allenstein, East Prussia, on 21 March 1902, the football coach first studied to become a teacher before later switching to football. He took over the Werkself from Franz Strehle, under whom the team twice managed to stay in the 1st Oberliga West. However, Strehle did not extend his contract in Leverkusen after these two very successful years.
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After promotion to Bundesliga North 2 in the summer of 1975, Bayer 04 are fighting relegation just eight months later. The club expects full commitment from everyone in this precarious situation. Promotion coach Manfred Rummel is to give up his main job as a teacher at the Mülheim special school and become a full-time coach at Bayer 04. The coach, who is very popular with the team, does not see himself in a position to fulfil the club's request. Despite a 2-0 home win against SpVgg Erkenschwick, Manfred Rummel is put on gardening leave by "mutual agreement".
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Bayer 04, already been promoted to the 1st Oberliga West, played friendly after friendly in the second half of May 1951. And that continued throughout the following month.
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Jacek Krzynowek was born on 15 May 1976 in Kamiensk, Poland, and grew up as a typical country boy. He spent his childhood less in structured training sessions and more on simple pitches, where he spent hours playing football with older boys. He realised early on that he had exceptional shooting power and enormous stamina. But for a long time, he didn't appreciate just how much talent he had. While others dream of a great career, professional football initially seems like a distant world to him that he only knows from television.
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