The playing surface at the home ground of the Werkself has been named Pitch of the Year for the 2021/22 season by the DFL (German Football League). The award has been made since 2013/14 in the Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2 for the outstanding quality of pitches. The winners are determined by marks from the team captains and referees on the condition of the pitch over the whole season as well as a range of measurements taken by an expert committee and testing by the stadium ground staff.
Bayer 04 receive the award for a second time. The first time for the Werkself was in the 2017/18 season. It's a title not only won by the pitch at the BayArena. The Ulrich Haberland Stadium and the Kurtekotten Performance Centre have twice been voted Pitch of the Year as home grounds for the Bayer 04 Women's team. Since the 2019/20 season, the German Football Association (DFB) has also made an award for the highest quality pitch in the Women's Bundesliga over the course of a whole season. Both the first award and the one for the 2020/21 season went to Leverkusen.
31 in total – that is the number of goals the Bayer 04 Women's team scored last season in the FLYERALARM Women's Bundesliga. From long-range shots into the top corner, through converted penalties and tap-ins from close range – they are all there. Milena Nikolic proved to be the most prolific scorer for the Black and Reds with a total of seven goals. A compilation of all the goals are available to watch again and enjoy HERE on the club's platforms.
The sports tribunal of the German Football Association (DFB) has imposed a fine in the sum of €6,250 on Bayer 04 in a single judge hearing following an indictment by the DFB control committee due to unsporting behaviour by their supporters. Immediately before kick-off in the Bundesliga match at Greuther Fürth (4-1), Leverkusen supporters let off at least five flares. That meant the kick-off was delayed by one and a half minutes.
Borussia Dortmund (€16,450) and Erzgebirge Aue (€9,200) were also fined due to flares being let off by their supporters.
The editors of the sports journal Kicker have published the rankings for the two remaining groups of positions for the first half of 2022. In the category of ‘Offensive wing players’, Werkself player Moussa Diaby finished second behind Eintracht Frankfurt’s Filip Kostic. The 22-year-old Frenchman stood out mainly with his impressive return of eight goals and seven assists in 17 matches in the Bundesliga Rückrunde and he was named in the ‘International class’.
Teammate Paulinho also made it into the rankings of the best attacking players on the wings and finished in seventh place. Ten starts, "good solutions in space", the ability to pick out teammates plus a match-winning brace against VfL Wolfsburg (2-0) put the Werkself number seven in the so-called ‘National class’
Amongst the strikers, Patrik Schick was third in the ‘International class’ behind Bayern Munich's Robert Lewandowski and Red Bull Leipzig's Christopher Nkunku. The reasoning: "Patrik Schick was not completely able to build on to his performances in the Hinrunde. That was primarily due to his injury on matchday 23 that meant he missed four games." Patrik scored eight goals in 13 Rückrunde games compared with 16 goals in 14 games in the Hinrunde.
At the summit of the Mexican league MX on Wednesday 8 June, an interview with Fernando Carro, Bayer 04 CEO, was broadcast in the context of the #Bayer04MexicoTour. The Werkself spent six days in the country in the middle of May as part of the celebrations for the centenary of Bayer AG in Mexico with a friendly against the top-flight side Deportivo Toluca plus a range of PR events. The aim of the tour was to promote and extend the strong and long-standing relationship with the country of Mexico, with its people and Bayer AG. The whole interview (in Spanish) is available HERE.
The former Werkself player Rudolf Wojtowicz today celebrates his 66th birthday – many happy returns. The defender joined Leverkusen for the 1982/83 season from the then top Polish club Szombierki Bytom. The former Poland international played 80 games for the Black and Reds in four seasons. Wojtowicz now works for VfL Wolfsburg as a scout.
Four Bayer 04 players are in action at the 35th edition of the Africa Cup of Nations being played in Morocco from 21 December to 18 January 2026: Eliesse Ben Seghir for the hosts, Edmond Tapsoba with Burkina Faso, Ibrahim Maza for Algeria and Christian Kofane with Cameroon. Updates on the AFCON matches involving Werkself players...
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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 personalised 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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With their wonderful goals, Martin Terrier and Florian Wirtz are up for the Bundesliga Goal of the Year 2025. Voting for fans will run exclusively via the official Bundesliga app until Sunday, 4 January.
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The ‘year after’ the most successful year in the club's history brought many changes at Bayer 04. In an exclusive double interview with bayer04.de shortly before the Christmas break, Fernando Carro and Simon Rolfes spoke about building a new team capable of winning trophies, the work of coach Kasper Hjulmand, the young new signings who have quickly developed into key players, and their personal plans for the Christmas holidays. Their outlook for the coming year also shows that the potential is far from exhausted and ambitions remain high.
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Last-minute ecstasy, huge disappointment and a historic performance on the European stage - 2025 was a real emotional roller coaster, especially for the U19s. A rousing run in the knockout phase secured the team a place in the final of the German championships, where they lost by the narrowest of margins. Despite the departure of several key players, the young Werkself team quickly regained their usual strength and qualified for the knockout rounds in the UEFA Youth League for the first time at the end of the year. In 2025, youngsters Jeremiah Mensah and Montrell Culbreath made their debuts in the Bundesliga, the DFB Pokal and the UEFA Champions League. The other youth teams also contributed great performances and a number of trophies to the collective Black and Red success, while the successful Bayer 04 Future Kids project broke new ground. Read on for the 2025 review of the youth teams.
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