First Round, 10.08.2019: Alemannia Aachen v Bayer 04 1-4 (0-2)
The first competitive match in the 2019/20 campaign took three Black and Red players on a trip down memory lane. The Werkself kicked off the season away to Alemannia Aachen in the first round of the DFB Cup and that certainly evoked pleasurable thoughts of old and new times for Simon Rolfes, Kai Havertz and Hans-Peter Lehnhoff.
The Bayer 04 sporting director came to the attention of Leverkusen as a young player for Alemannia in the second division in 2004/05 and he still lives in the area. Kai Havertz was born in Aachen and his parents live just outside Aachen in Alsdorf. The young Kai took his first steps in the game as a youth player at Alemannia Mariadorf. His grandad used to be the chairman of the club when today’s team liaison manager Hans-Peter Lehnhoff was a talented forward. In front of a full house at the Tivoli – with 4,000 Bayer 04 fans amongst the 30,000 crowd – the battling underdogs initially competed on equal terms. However, an unlucky own goal by Aachen’s captain Hachenberg (19’) and a disguised low shot from Kevin Volland (39’) gave the disciplined favourites a 2-0 lead at half-time.
A goal scored by Batarilo from a counter-attack (56’) briefly got the home fans on their feet. But the hopes of the Alemannia fans disappeared fifteen minutes later when Leon Bailey made it 3-1 seconds after coming off the bench. And a man from Aachen in Black and Red rounded off the scoring: Kai Havertz netted for the final score of 4-1 (88’).
Match stats:
Alemannia Aachen: Cymer – Fiedler (Glowacz 81’), Heinze, Hackenberg, Wallenborn (Salata 69’) – Rakk (Pütz 83’) – Müller, Batarilo, Garnier, Rüter – Bors
Bayer 04: Özcan – Dragovic, S. Bender, Tah – Bellarabi (Bailey 72’), Aránguiz (Baumgartlinger 72’), Demirbay, Wendell – Havertz, Volland, Amiri (Diaby 80’)
Goals: 0-1 Hackenberg o.g. (19’), 0-2 Volland (39’), 1-2 Batarilo (56’), 1-3 Bailey (72’), 1-4 Havertz (88’)
Referee: Martin Petersen (Stuttgart)
Booked: Wallenborn
Attendance: 30,861 (sold-out)
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 working 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 personal 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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