
Hi kids,
A warm welcome back to the Lions Club. I've been one of you fair some two and a half years. Back then I was asked whether I wanted to be a sort of member of the Lions Club. I was the youngest player in the team at the time and a couple of people from Bayer 04 thought it would be a good match between me and the youngest Werkself fans.
They were right! They officially named me as patron and I've been to a couple of your events at Christmas parties and similar occasions. And I've seen how much fun you all have together. And not just with watching football. All the other things you do together would have given me great pleasure when I was your age. Just carry on, stick together and in you enjoy your time at Bayer. And, above all, cross your fingers for us to achieve our targets again this season.
At the end of the day that's the best thing there is. To be nervous, to hope and, finally, to celebrate with your club when they win. And you can also be sad if it doesn't work out. But not for long! Then you go again, looking forward to getting stuck into the next game.
According to the motto 'Strong Bayer – strong Lions'. I've just thought of that. Perhaps you can take it over for the future. With a motto like that then nothing can go wrong, can it?
So kids – to a good, strong as a lion rest of the season.
Yours Julian


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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