Moussa Diaby is on the verge of making his debut for France. Coach Didier Deschamps picked the 22-year-old for the first time on Thursday for the the international fixtures over the next two weeks. Diaby has previously played for the junior France teams from the U18s upwards.
Argentina have also announced their squad – and Exequiel Palacios has been called up again. Other national associations have caught up this afternoon: The Ivory Coast have called up Odilon Kossounou, Chile Charles Aránguiz and Greece Panos Retsos. Also on international duty is Emrehan Gedikli. The youngster is in the Germany U19 squad under coach Hannes Wolf for the first time.
The Bayer 04 top management are on the road a lot at the moment. CEO Fernando Carro flew to Istanbul on Wednesday to complete a packed programme of activities. The 57-year-old took part in a meeting of the UEFA Club Competitions Committee (CCC) on Thursday morning and the Board der European Club Association met after lunch. The ECA represents around 230 professional clubs in Europe. 24 board members of the organisation meet regularly. Carro was appointed to the board in July 2021.
The 57-year-old was at the UEFA event for the Champions League draw in the evening and on Friday afternoon it will be exciting from a Werkself perspective. Fernando Carro will be present at 13.00 CEST when the draw is held for the group stage of the Europa League. 32 teams are in the running including the Werkself and Eintracht Frankfurt with the draw broadcast on UEFA.com.
After sporting director Simon Rolfes was a guest on the Sport1 broadcast Doppelpass for the first Bundesliga matchday, Rudi Völler will represent the colours of Bayer 04 on TV on Sunday, 29 August. The sporting managing director is a guest on ‘Sky90’. Patrick Wasserziehr will welcome Völler plus Toni Schumacher and Sky pundit Lothar Matthäus. They will discuss the coming Bundesliga matchday, the start to the season and other current football issues. The programme starts at 11.30 CEST and will be broadcast on the pay TV channel Sky Bundesliga 1.
The floods in July not only affected Leverkusen and surrounding areas but also hit the Aachen area hard. The region where Kai Havertz was born and brought up. Our homegrown player, who wore the Bayer 04 shirt from 2010 to 2020, was very moved by the damage and suffering and he started a donation campaign for the flood victims in tandem with the Red Cross. Here is the site for purchasing football boots designed by Kai at auction.
From this season, the Europa League will be broadcast by the RTL media group. The games will either be shown on the free-to-air TV channels RTL or Nitro, or they will be on the subscription streaming portal TVNOW. The media company has set up a team hat to explain details of the competition and clubs involved. There will be two female TV presenters with a Bayer 04 connection. The broadcasts will be hosted by Laura Papendick, who gained her first media experience at Bayer 04 TV. In 2016 she joined Sky Sport News, then in 2019 Sport1, and since the summer the former competitive swimmer from Bergisch-Gladbach has worked for the RTL Group. She will be working with Anna Kraft. The TV journalist grew up in Leverkusen and is a Werkself fan. Black and Red women’s power for RTL and the Europa League.
The Bayer 04 Women are back in action at the weekend. And, thanks to new TV contracts, the FLYERALARM Women’s Bundesliga has a “new presence level.” “We definitely wanted a higher profile and we taken a big step forwards,”said Hannelore Ratzeburg, vice-president of the German Football Association (DFB). For the first time, all 132 games will be broadcast live on MagentaSport and one Saturday match will be a fixed part on the ARD Sportschau. One game per matchday will be continue to be shown live on Eurosport on free-to-air TV.
The Bayer 04 Women start on Sunday, 29 August with a 13.00 CEST kick-off against FC Carl Zeiss Jena and the first home game on the following weekend – Sunday, 5 September, 13.30 CEST – against SGS Essen will both be on MagentaSport. The home game on matchday 3 against Turbine Potsdam (10 September, 19.15 CEST) is on Eurosport.
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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Women’s team forward Paulina Bartz is leaving Bayer 04 Leverkusen to play for Hamburg SV until the end of the season. The 20-year-old, whose contract runs to 2027, joins the Bundesliga newcomers on loan until the summer.
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