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Tom Gott

Erik ten Hag Endures Nightmare Start As Bayer Leverkusen Manager With Humiliating Friendly Defeat

Erik ten Hag’s first Bayer Leverkusen game could hardly have gone worse. | IMAGO/Vitalii Kliuiev

Erik ten Hag’s start to life as Bayer Leverkusen manager ended in shock as his side were stunned 5–1 by Flamengo’s Under-20 side on Friday.

Ten Hag joined Bayer Leverkusen this summer, returning to work for the first time since being sacked by Manchester United in October 2024, and is looking to follow on from Xabi Alonso’s hugely successful tenure at the BayArena.

His first pre-season test saw Leverkusen fly out to Brazil for a meeting with a Flamengo reserve side, and it could hardly have gone worse as Ten Hag’s side were thumped 5–0.

Six first-team players started the game, including striker Victor Boniface and new goalkeeper Mark Flekken, but Leverkusen fell behind after just two minutes and were 2–0 down inside 10 after an Arthur own goal.

Ten Hag made changes every 30 minutes during the game, clearly prioritising fitness over the result, but was stunned to see his side enter the break 4–0 down after goals from Matheus Gonçalves and Pedro Leão.

Gusttavo netted a fifth 10 minutes after the restart, at which point Ten Hag made another wave of changes. On came Edmond Tapsoba, Alejandro Grimaldo, Patrick Schick, Nathan Tella and Granit Xhaka, and it was only at this point that Leverkusen started to control the game.

17-year-old winger Montrell Culbreath netted Leverkusen’s only response in the 70th minute.

“The result looks bad, but I don’t really care about results in pre-season,” Ten Hag said after the game. “We should never lose, even by a large margin, but it was important to me not to lose any players. It would have been better to play the game later.

“The last 30 minutes were good, there were signs of things.”


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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Erik ten Hag Endures Nightmare Start As Bayer Leverkusen Manager With Humiliating Friendly Defeat.

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