
FC Eintracht Norderstedt or TSV Sasel – one of these two Hamburg amateur clubs can look forward to a big match against Bayer 04 after they qualified for the Hamburg association cup final on Sunday. That was the outcome of the draw for the first round of the DFB Cup (11-14 September) held on 26 July.
Regional League Norderstedt beat league rivals Altona 93, the former club of Jonathan Tah, 3-2 at their own ground. After going behind early on (2’), ‘EN’ turned the game round. After Altona levelled the scores at 2-2 (48’), Norderstedt were able to respond in the middle of the second half and score the winner on 68 minutes to ensure progress to the cup final. Sasel followed suit an hour later and were also able to celebrate going through to the final with a 3-0 away win at fellow Oberliga rivals SV Rugenbergen.
The Hamburg cup final will be part of an amateurs’ finals day on , 22 August (kick-off: 14.45 CEST/live on ARD), at the stadium in the Wolfgang Meyer sports complex in Hamburg-Stellingen.
Moving on to the Champions League: Leverkusen’s Bundesliga rivals RB Leipzig are in the semi-finals of Europe’s elite club competition thanks to a 2-1 win against Atlético Madrid. Former Werkself player Kevin Kampl played the full 90 minutes against the Spaniards. The Slovenian spent eleven years in the youth section at Bayer 04, and then went on to play for RB Salzburg and Borussia Dortmund before returning to Leverkusen in 2015 for two years. Kampl has been at Leipzig for the past three years – and he has been reunited with Markus Krösche in Saxony. The former Werkself assistant coach (July 2015 to March 2017 under Roger Schmidt) was appointed sporting director at RB Leipzig in the summer of 2019.

Kampl, Krösche and Co. face the top French side Paris Saint Germain on Tuesday (kick-off: 21.00 CET) in Portugal’s capital Lisbon, and the second semi-final on Wednesday involves Bayern Munich and Olympique Lyon (21.00 CET).
Until the summer of this year, Helmut Jungheim was the head of the youth academy at Bayer Leverkusen. Since 1 August, he has been in charge of the Bayer 04 coaches academy. Jungheim celebrates his 63rd birthday today (Monday); Bayer 04 wish him many happy returns!

Bayer 04 Leverkusen will have to manage without centre-back Edmond Tapsoba in the coming weeks. The Burkina Faso international returned to the Werkself from the Africa Cup of Nations in Morocco with a muscle injury.
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Bayer 04 face Hamburger SV for the first time in almost eight years. Although the Hanseatic city team are often below par on the road, they are regularly in top form in front of their own fans. In particular, 18-year-old shooting star Luka Vuskovic is proving to be a real bonus for Merlin Polzin's team, both in attack and defence. However, that should not scare the Werkself: Not only was the last defeat against the newly promoted team 17 games ago, but Kasper Hjulmand's players are in with a chance of securing their fifth win in six games against HSV. Today’s matchday news.
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Hamburger SV and Bayer 04 meet again in the Bundesliga for the first time in almost eight years. This Tuesday evening, 13 January (kick-off: 20:30 CET), the promoted team with impressive home form welcome the Werkself to the Volksparkstadion to round off the Hinrunde. The lowdown on our next opponents.
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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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