
On Tuesday morning, nine players completed a recovery session on mountain bikes including the Bender twins, Dominik Kohr, Kevin Volland and Lucas Alario, who celebrated his 26th birthday. At the same time, Karim Bellarabi, who has been suspended since the game against FC Bayern but will be available for the Hannover match, completed shooting practice with assistant coach Niko Schneck.
Julian Baumgartlinger and Panagiotis Retsos worked on their comeback on neighbouring pitches. While the Austrian was able to report "very good progress" in his recovery from a torn collateral ligament in his left knee and talked about returning to full training in the coming weeks, Retsos is already a step further on. The Greek, who suffered a torn ligament in his right thigh at the summer training camp in Zell am See, worked on a range of running and passing drills with assistant coach Xaver Zembrod and he could soon be in a position to train with his team-mates again. Charles Aránguiz was also at the BayArena on Tuesday. The Chilean's continuing knee problems mean he was only able to follow a special rehab session at the Werkstatt.
Up to Friday, there are three more sessions for the ten-man training group consisting of Lucas Alario, Sven Bender, Karim Bellarabi, Dominik Kohr, Kevin Volland, Mitchell Weiser and Wendell – plus the three goalkeepers staying behind in Leverkusen Ramazan Öczan, Thorsten Kirschbaum and Tomasz Kucz. Capitain Lars Bender and Kai Havertz, who misses the chance of making another appearance for Germany following a knee injury picked up against Freiburg, continue to work on their own.











Ten Werkself internationals are set to represent their countries from Thursday to Tuesday. In addition to the eight call-ups expected (Jakub Bednarzcyk, Julian Brandt, Aleksandar Dragovic, Lukas Hradecky, Tin Jedvaj, Isaac Kiese Thelin, Paulinho and Jonathan Tah), there are two others: Leon Bailey has decided to accept the invitation to play for the Jamaican national team. The 21-year-old is set to make his international debut against Bonaire on 15 October. Sam Schreck was called up to the Germany U20 squad on Monday by coach Mikel Schönweitz (for the friendlies against the Netherlands and Switzerland.


Werkself-TV shows the highlights of Bayer 04 Women's 2-0 win against Hamburger SV on Matchday 9 of the 2026/27 Google Pixel Women's Bundesliga.
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1. FC Köln host Bayer 04 on Sunday 8 November (kick-off 15:30 CET) in the 75th Bundesliga derby between the Rhineland neighbours. The lowdown on our next opponents.
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The Werkself have the chance to end an intense run of fixtures with a derby victory as they visit Köln on Sunday ahead of the international break. Head coach Carles Martínez spoke on Friday at his press conference about the attributes his team needs and the support of the fans.
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After back-to-back away defeats, Bayer 04 Women now face their penultimate home fixture of 2026 as they welcome Hamburg to the Ulrich-Haberland-Stadion on Saturday (14:00 CET) seeking three important points in the Google Pixel Bundesliga.
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