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.
Bundesliga champions Bayer 04 have also dominated the division’s Team of the Season after football fans around the world named Jonathan Tah, Alejandro Grimaldo, Jeremie Frimpong, Granit Xhaka, Florian Wirtz and Victor Boniface in the Bundesliga’s best XI for 2023/24, in cooperation with EA Sports.
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Bayer 04 Women suffered just their second home defeat of the season on Matchday 20 in the Google Pixel Bundesliga, going down 2-1 to Bayern Munich on Saturday afternoon. Nikola Karczewska’s consolation goal in the hour mark wasn’t enough to complete a comeback as the visitors wrapped up the title for the second year in a row. Leverkusen remain on 28 points.
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Bayer 04 Women host Bayern Munich at the Ulrich-Haberland-Stadion on Saturday (kick-off: 12pm CEST) facing a familiar scenario. The visitors have the chance to be crowned champions in the Google Pixel Bundesliga, just like then they last came to Leverkusen 12 months ago. A goalless draw on that occasion saw Robert de Pauw’s side delay the title celebrations, and they want to do the same again with three games to go.
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Only a few hours after the Werkself’s 2-0 win away at Roma in the UEFA Europa League semi-final first leg, attentions turned to the next game as Bayer 04 visit Eintracht Frankfurt for Bundesliga Matchday 32 on Sunday (kick-off: 5.30pm CEST). Speaking at his press conference in Rome shortly before returning to Leverkusen on Friday morning, head coach Xabi Alonso talked about the strengths of six-placed Frankfurt and how the team will handle his touchline suspension.
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