Lowdown on the opponents:
The Dutch club FC Utrecht are currently sixth in the Eredivisie. There are currently two Germans at Utrecht: Leon Guwara, formerly a player in the Bundesliga with SV Darmstadt, and Rico Strieder, who went through the youth ranks at FC Bayern for 12 years and played one game for the first team: He was left-back for the full 90 minutes in the 2-0 defeat for the record champions at Bayer 04 on 2 May 2015. Justin Hoogma is also part of the Utrecht squad this season on loan from Hoffenheim. The coach of the Dutch club is John van den Brom.
The van den Brom team have three games to play before the winter break starts. Utrecht visit Heracles Almelo on Sunday before playing FC Groningen in the second round of the Dutch cup competition four days later. FC Utrecht end 2019 with a league home game against Feyenoord.
FC St. Gallen, the reinvigorated big club from eastern Switzerland, have been managed by the German head coach Peter Zeigler since 2018. FC St. Gallen are in touch with the leading group in the Swiss Raiffeisen Super League with 35 points from 17 games behind reigning champions Young Boys Bern (37) and FC Basel (36). The fact St. Gallen are currently in third place is no coincidence as the team recently demonstrated. They have secured three 4-1 wins in the last three league games. That means the team coached by Zeigler, whose last job in Germany was at Stuttgarter Kickers over a decade ago in 2007, currently have the best attack in the league with 41 goals scored
There is also a German player at FC St. Gallen. Midfielder Lucas Görtler, who played for FC Utrecht last season, was signed by the Swiss club this summer and he was previously at FC Kaiserslautern from 2015 to 2017. FC St. Gallen have their last league game of the year on Saturday: They entertain fourth-placed FC Zürich.
In the previous game against RB Leipzig in December last year, the Werkself turned came from behind to win 3-1 and further improved Leverkusen's already strong record against the Red Bulls. Montrell Culbreath stood out with his first goal on his debut for the Black and Reds. While the 18-year-old would certainly like to score a second goal against Leipzig on Saturday night, the attack-minded visitors come to the BayArena in confident mood after five Bundesliga victories in a row. The Nordkurve12 supporters group knows the Werkself will therefore once again be reliant on the vociferous support of the fans, and has once again called for the ‘Finally Red’ campaign in the run-in. Today’s matchday news.
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Video games manufacturer Electronic Arts (EA), together with the German Football League (DFL), announced the top male and female selections for the 2025/26 Bundesliga season this week. Bayer 04 striker Vanessa Fudalla is in the starting eleven of the women's "Team of the Season". Alejandro Grimaldo and Aleix Garcia have been selected as bench players in the men's team.
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This special event showed once again how strong Bayer 04 are as a team: As part of ‘BarmeniaGothaer gives joy’, the Werkself players Edmond Tapsoba, Ibrahim Maza and Christian Kofane supported the sale of individually designed T-shirts for a good cause at the Fanwelt on Thursday. Several hundred fans came to take part in the charity campaign. Leverkusen's main sponsor BarmeniaGothaer donated the proceeds to the Fondation Edmond Tapsoba, which helps people in Tapsoba's home country of Burkina Faso in their challenging everyday lives.
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With three games to play before the end of the season, the Bayer 04 Women can break one record and equal another at SGS Essen. After three wins on the bounce, coach Roberto Pätzold's team are aiming to maintain the chance of third place in Sunday’s away game (14:00 CEST, Stadion an der Hafenstraße).
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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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