News in brief: #BeatThePro live stream with Frimpong

The Werkself right-back Jeremie Frimpong shows how quick he is on his feet on the pitch week after week. But what's he like with a controller in his hands? Bayer 04 fans can find out this afternoon as part of the #B04eSports event ‘#BeatThePro’. Frimpong and the Leverkusen eSports player Paul ‘B04_PAUL’ Degner join forces against Werkself fans who have applied for the match on social media. The event will be broadcast live from 16.30 CET on the Bayer 04 Twitch channel. Click here for the stream.

Great honour for Nikolic

The perfect duo for an important job: Milena Nikolic from the Bayer 04 Women's team and Edin Dzeko (Inter Milan), the captains of the Bosnia and Herzegovina teams, are the patrons for the U17 Women's European Championships. The UEFA tournament lasts from 3 to 15 May and the holders and record winners are Germany.

happy birthday, Henni and Paolo

Bayer 04 today (Monday) congratulate Henrike Sahlmann on her 25th birthday. The Essen-born player started her career at SGS Essen and progressed through all their youth teams. The defender went on to play in the Bundesliga for Essen and in 2017 she decided to move under the Bayer Cross. Her first season at Bayer 04 saw promotion to the Women's Bundesliga and now she has made over 50 appearances in Black and Red. Carry on, Henni.

And the former Werkself player Paulo Rink is also celebrating his birthday – he is 49 years old. The Brazilian-born player and 13-time German international joined Bayer 04 from Brazil in 1997. The centre-forward was at Leverkusen for five years where he spent half a season on loan at FC Santos (Brazil) and at FC Nürnberg. Rink scored 35 goals and provided 17 assists in 121 appearances for the Werkself. Today he is living in his hometown of Curitiba where he works as a businessman and is also a politician. Many happy returns.

14 years ago today…

"Bayer put on an exciting attacking display" – with those words, the kicker summed up the brilliant 5-1 win for the Werkself against Galatasaray. Today is the 14th anniversary of that impressive second group stage return match in the UEFA Cup.

After just 20 minutes, a brace from Sergej Barbarez and a strike from Stefan Kießling gave the Werkself a three-goal lead. In the second half, Karim Haggui and Bernd Schneider from the penalty spot made it 5-0. The team under coach Michael Skibbe were certain of progressing to the Round of 16 and even a late consolation for the Turkish record champions was not able to ruin the joyous scenes after the final whistle.

The Werkself went through to the quarter-finals by beating Hamburg SV (1-0, 3-2) but then went out against the top Russian club and later UEFA Cup winners Zenit St Petersburg on the wrong end of an aggregate score of 4-1.