Bayer 04 Leverkusen were relegated from the Regional League to the Middle Rhine Association League in 1973 and thereby no longer amongst the professional teams. That relegation was doubly annoying because no team was promoted to the Regional League West in 1973/74. The DFB decided to turn the five Regional Leagues into the Bundesliga and two Bundesliga 2s North and South and that meant Bayer 04 only had the chance to get promoted in the 1974/75 season.
The Middle Rhine championship in 1973/74 was out of reach for the Werkself but they do play in the finals of the German Amateur Championship going out to Victoria Hamburg in the second round.
A new coach takes over the helm for the 1974/75 season. Manfred Rummel, former striker at Black and White Essen and a German Cup winner with them in 1959, is now in charge of the team with the cross on their chests. And a young striker joins the Werkself from Frechen 20: Matthias Brücken. As there were no major departures, Bayer 04 were favourites to take top spot in the Middle Rhine Association League with the associated opportunity to gain promotion to Bundesliga 2 North.
That happened in 1975. That paved the way to promotion to the Bundesliga four years later. In the following months we will follow this team on the way back into professional football and discover that it was not as easy as it appeared at the start of the 1974/75 season.
Legends like Gerd Kentschke, Hubert Makel and Matthias Brücken are familiar to many Bayer 04 fans. But we also had players like Manfred Vetter, Willi Rehbach, Peter Surbach and Dieter Axemacher who also made their contribution to taking Bayer 04 Leverkusen back to where the club belonged: in professional football.
On 25 August 1974, the team under coach Manfred Rummel faced SV Bergfried in the first round of the Middle Rhine Pokal. The Black and Reds looked listless in pouring rain and not only avoided challenges but also huge puddles of water. Gerd Kentschke was the outstanding player on the day scoring twice and he was also involved in the remaining three goals netted by Klaus Röhrig, Matthias Brücken and Dieter Axemacher. Here is the Werkself line-up:
Hubert Makel – Hans-Werner Marx, Peter Litzinger, Willi Rehbach, Manfred Vetter, Wolfgang Fabian, Matthias Brücken, Gerd Kentschke, Manfred Schumann, Dieter Axemacher, Klaus Röhrig. Peter Surbach comes on for Dieter Axemacher in the second half.
The first league matchday took place a week later with Bayer 04 away to newly promoted Godesberger FV. But that match was in September.
Willi Korth was born in Essen on 12 April 1955. He was a youth player at TuS Essen 81. After coming to the attention of Schwarz Weiss Essen, he signed for them in the Bundesliga 2 North for the 1977/78 season. He made 24 appearances and scored one goal. The Black and Whites from Essen were relegated at the end of the season.
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Rudolf ‘Rudi’ Völler was born in Hanau on 13 April 1960. His father took the young Rudi as an eight-year-old to training at TSV 1860 Hanau. In the sedate Hessen town on the Main he came to the attention of Offenbach Kickers. But Rudi completed his secondary school and started training to become an office administrator.
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Jean Pierre de Keyser was born in Cologne on 13 April 1965 as the son of a Belgian NATO soldier stationed in Spich and a German mother. His childhood dream of becoming a vet was resolutely followed at school initially. But football threw a spanner in the works.
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The third last matchday in the 1954/55 season brings a big showdown at the Stadion Am Stadtpark – the Werkself entertain second-placed SV Sodingen. A win for Bayer 04 would take them above Sodingen and qualify for the finals of the German championship if the last two games of the season in the Oberliga West 1 are also won.
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In this video you can watch impressive and important goals in the history of Bayer 04 in the month of April. It is not always about the beauty of the goals but also about remembering special games and players.
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