
He knows what makes the Black and Yellows tick: Kerem Demirbay, under the Bayer Cross for two years, spent most of his youth career at BVB. Ahead of the top match between the Werkself and Borussia Dortmund on Saturday, 11 September (kick-off: 15.30 CEST), the 28-year-old also talked about which game for BVB he remembers best. What Demirbay expects from the visitors and what his targets are for the game at the BayArena, can be found on the brand new Bayer 04 app. You can download it HERE.
Like several of their teammates at the start of the week, Florian Wirtz and Panos Retsos have ended their international duty. Youngster Wirtz played for Germany against Iceland. The team under head coach Hansi Flick mastered their challenge comfortably with a 4-0 win.
The visitors, with Bayer 04 homegrown talent Kai Havertz (now at Chelsea) coming on at the start of the second half, did not concede for the third game in succession. The 18-year-old Wirtz again came off the bench, as in the previous two games, this time replacing Leon Goretzka on 80 minutes.
Like Germany, Greece were winners in the third and final game in the current international break. The match in Athens against Sweden ended in a 2-1 victory. Werkself central defender Panos Retsos was on the subs bench for the full 90 minutes.
Three Black and Red players are in action in the early hours of Friday morning and that marks the end of the international break from a Bayer 04 perspective – all in the South American World Cup qualifiers. At 0.30 CEST, Ecuador with Werkself new signing Piero Hincapie are away to Uruguay, and Charles Aránguiz and Chile face Colombia half an hour later. From 1.30 CEST, Argentina with Exequiel Palacios have a home game in Buenos Aires against Bolivia. Good luck, lads!
Oliver Kahn, the CEO at Bayern Munich, will represent the champions of Germany on the board of the European Club Association. The 52-year-old will succeed Michael Gerlinger (Legal director at FC Bayern) in November. Kahn will join Fernando Carro, the Bayer 04 CEO, on the ECA board. The third Bundesliga representative on the board is Hans-Joachim Watzke of Borussia Dortmund.
These numbers inspire confidence of full stadiums in the Bundesliga again soon: Just 0.000006 per cent of football fans have tested positive for Covid-19 since the return of crowds at games. In 73 games with more than 900,000 tickets sold in the Bundesliga, the second division and the Supercup there were only six cases of coronavirus from contract tracing. In addition: None of the clubs are aware of any of the six people infecting others at a stadium.
“Although he plays for our rivals Leverkusen, somebody like Moussa Diaby creates great joy with his play.” These words were chosen by Max Eberl, sporting director at Borussia Mönchengladbach, in a recent interview with Sport Bild in response to the question of which Bundesliga players excite him at the moment.”
In the clash with Eberl’s Foals (4-0), the 22-year-old, who was recently called up to the France squad for the first time, scored the third goal. Diaby has scored two goals and provided one assist in the first three matchdays.

For the third time in a row, the Leverkusen eSports players have made it through to the final round of the VBL Club Championship. From 7 to 8 March, they will compete for the German Club Championship at XPERION in Hamburg. At the start of the final round, they face Hamburger SV in the Round of 16. The match starts at 19:30 CET on Saturday, 7 March and will be broadcast live on the VBL Twitch channel. The eSports preview.
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"We played with pace and patience today. That was the decisive factor," said managing director sport Simon Rolfes following the 1-0 win at Hamburger SV in the rearranged match on Wednesday night. Although the Werkself still had room for improvement in terms of capitalising on their chances against the Red Shorts, they produced a different display to last time out and were rewarded for a concentrated performance over 90 minutes. The Werkself review features reaction to the game, including from a happy starting XI debutant, as well as the match stats.
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Werkself TV shows the highlights of Bayer 04's 1-0 win in rearranged match at Hamburger SV on Matchday 17 of the 2025/26 Bundesliga season...
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The second attempt was a successful one: the Werkself won 1-0 at Hamburger SV in the rearranged Bundesliga Matchday 17 encounter. Head coach Kasper Hjulmand's side dominated play from the start and eventually scored the winning goal through Christian Kofane in the 73rd minute.
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