Football, with its enormous reach and attraction again and again serves as an outstanding platform to convey and promote values such as tolerance and integration. With this target, the European Football for Development Network (EFDN) has launched European-wide campaign FARE (Football Against Racism Europe). The project is supported by the EU with many clubs involved – including Bayer 04. The Werkself takes a clear stand against racism and discrimination.
Heiko Herrlich played for Bayer 04 for four years (1989-93) and 24 years later he returned to Leverkusen as head coach. The 48-year-old has been head coach at FCA since March – and, on matchday five, he brings his Augsburg team to face his former club.
“When Heiko came to us, he had won promotion with Jahn Regensburg twice in succession. And it all started really well here with us. After a disappointing twelfth-place finish in the previous season, he brought a wind of change and we had a decent season,” recalls the sporting managing director Rudi Völler. However, the team performed below expectations in the second season so the club management decided to replace Herrlich with Peter Bosz in December 2018.
“We get on well together now. I’m happy for him that he has made such a good start to the new season with Augsburg,” said Völler. Fernando Carro, chairman of the board, is also positive about the time with Heiko Herrlich: “He was the first coach I worked with as CEO at Bayer 04. We had a lot of regular communication – and even today – a good relationship. After the game against us, I obviously wish him every success with Augsburg.
In addition to Herrlich, there will be another former Leverkusen man in the away dugout on Monday. Iraklis Metaxas, youth coach at Bayer 04 from 2016 to 2019, joined Augsburg in the summer of 2020. Metaxas and Herrlich had already worked together at the DFB (2008/09) and that VfL Bochum (2009/10).
Which player should go into a jungle camp and who has to be filmed on a salsa course? Our players face these and many other amusing questions from this week on a regular basis in the new format ‘Spoilt for choice’ on the official Bayer 04 YouTube channel. First off is no less a person than Lars Bender, who sets his twin brother one or the other mean tasks and does not spare his other teammates either. If you want to know who was the best DJ at Lars Bender’s wedding and who held out longest in the ice bath then you must not miss the first episode. Click HERE for the video...
Christoph Daum can look back at a number of honours in his coaching career to date. Born in Zwickau, he started in the dugout at FC Köln and went on to win the German league title with VfB Stuttgart in 1992. Shortly after that he joined Besiktas. In Istanbul, he won the cup in 1994 and the league title a year later. Bayer 04 brought the coach back to the Bundesliga in 1996. Daum was head coach at Leverkusen to 2000. In his first season under the Bayer Cross, he finished runner-up in the Bundesliga and he earned a reward from the sports broadcaster ran; Premiere (today: Sky) named him coach of the season. Daum led the Werkself to the runners-up spot twice in 1997 and 1998.
The European drifter went on to win the double in Austria in 2003 with Austria Vienna. In 2004 and 2005 he won the Turkish league with Fenerbahçe. Daum’s most recent position as a coach was in 2016 to 2017 at the helm of the Romanian national team. On Saturday, the old hand, who received the most votes from Werkself fans as a coach in the vote for the Bundesliga All-Stars held as part of the club celebrations of 40 years in the Bundesliga, celebrates his 67th birthday – Bayer 04 wish him: Many happy returns!
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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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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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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