"Karim will definitely miss a couple of games but we are hoping Jona will be able to play at the weekend," said the Swiss coach about the two players who went off injured. Bellarabi suffered a muscle injury in his left thigh in the Bochum game, and Tah was taken off due to a rib injury.
Sardar Azmoun was able to train again with the squad on Wednesday after recovering from flu. "Sardar needs more time to be 100% fit," said Seoane. The 43-year-old coach is still hoping to be able to call on the services of the winter signing against Leipzig on Sunday 17 April (kick-off: 19.30 CEST): "He can help us immediately in the run-in with his instinct and his technique."
The difficult personnel situation – with Wirtz, Adli, Frimpong and Fosu-Mensah already out for the rest of the season – was specifically excluded as an excuse by Seoane in the press conference: "We have the motivation and the ambition to achieve the maximum."
The head coach is confident looking back at the first half of the season: "We showed how to do it before the winter break when we didn't have any strikers available. We have to believe in our own strengths and look for new options."
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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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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In Germany, the temperatures are currently around zero, leaving even professional footballers freezing - but not the Bayer 04 Women. Roberto Pätzold's team have fled the cold to the south and are preparing for the second half of the season at a training camp in the Algarve, almost 2,000 kilometres away from home as the crow flies. The Leverkusen squad landed in Faro on Saturday morning and have already completed the first three training sessions over the weekend.
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It was a disappointing Saturday night. The Werkself lost 4-1 to VfB Stuttgart to start the new year on Bundesliga matchday 16 in 2025/26, a result that left both players and fans disappointed. "We played without any passion," said Alejandro Grimaldo honestly afterwards. Teammate Jarell Quansah was even more self-critical, emphasising: "We were miles off it in the first half. You can't put in a performance like that, especially in front of our own fans and I can only apologise to them, to be honest." Read on for the reaction, facts and stats from the clash with VfB Stuttgart in the Werkself review.
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