Mesut Özil (Arsenal) gave the World Cup winners of 2014 the lead on 11 minutes in Klagenfurt on Saturday night before the Austrians, coached by former Bayer 04 player and full of Bundesliga stars, turned the game round in the second half – much to the annoyance of Joachim Löw: "I'm disappointed with the defeat as we didn't do a lot of what we set out to. We had a decent first half but then we increasingly lost our way and nothing went right after that," said the Germany coach after the game. Martin Hinteregger (FC Augsburg) levelled on 53 minutes with Alessandro Schöpf (FC Schalke) putting the hosts ahead on 69 minutes.
The match kicked off at 19.43 instead of 18.00 due to severe weather conditions with the fixture briefly under threat of being abandoned. Leverkusen's Julian Brandt started on the right side of midfield but the 22-year-old failed to convert chances on 20 and 39 minutes thereby missing the chance to score his second goal in his fourteenth international appearance before being replaced by Timo Werner on 67 minutes. "I was determined to do my best. I could have put one or two chances away," said Brandt. The Werkself number ten is relaxed ahead of the announcement of the final Germany squad: „"I'm relatively relaxed and I'll wait and see what happens on Monday."
Brandt was not the only Werkself player to appear in front of the 30,000 crowd at the Wörthersee Stadium. The hosts were skippered by Julian Baumgartlinger in defensive midfield for the full 90 minutes and Aleksandar Dragovic , recently on loan at Leicester City, played in a back three. Both were able to celebrate the first Austria win against Germany since 1986. "The decisive factor was we wanted it more in the second half," was the verdict of Austria captain Baumgartlinger.
Three of the Werkself's next four matches in the Google Pixel Women's Bundesliga are at home at the Ulrich Haberland Stadium. All fans now have the opportunity to purchase tickets for the upcoming home games. The clash with newly promoted FC Nürnberg is followed two weeks later by the derby against FC Köln on Carnival Friday. Nine days later, Leverkusen will host TSG Hoffenheim. The latest information on match ticket sales at a glance.
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Bayer 04 Leverkusen have appointed the Spaniard Gerard Roca as Head of Coaching/Methodology for the U16 to U19 youth teams. The 31-year-old most recently worked as coordinator of the Catalan national football teams and was previously instrumental in the successful youth development at the Spanish club CF Damm.
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Video game producer Electronic Arts (EA) has announced the nominees for the Men's and Women's Team of the Year (TOTY) for EA Sports FC 26. With Patrik Schick and Alejandro Grimaldo for the men and Vanessa Fudalla for the women, there are three Bayer 04 players included. Fans of the Black-and-Reds can vote for each top XI of 2025 from now until 18:59 CET on Monday 12 January.
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Four Bayer 04 players are in action at the 35th edition of the Africa Cup of Nations being played in Morocco from 21 December to 18 January 2026: Eliesse Ben Seghir for the hosts, Edmond Tapsoba with Burkina Faso, Ibrahim Maza for Algeria and Christian Kofane with Cameroon. Updates on the AFCON matches involving Werkself players...
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