Erik ten Hag’s first game in charge of Bayer Leverkusen ended in a 5-1 defeat to Flamengo’s under-20s side on Friday night, in a horror show for the former Manchester United boss
Former Manchester United boss Erik ten Hag suffered a disastrous start to life at Bayer Leverkusen – after they were humiliated by Flamengo’s Under-20 team.
In his first game back in management since being sacked by United last year, Ten Hag – who took over from Xabi Alonso at Leverkusen last month – saw his side humbled and embarrassed in Brazil, beaten 5-1. It was his first game in the dugout since being dismissed by United last October.
He witnessed his new squad being soundly defeated by the Brazilian team. German media outlet Bild labelled the match ‘a debacle’.
Leverkusen may still be adjusting to life without Florian Wirtz, Jeremie Frimpong and Jonathan Tah, all of whom left the Bundesliga side at the end of the season and had been key players during their title winning triumph of 2023-24, and it was only a friendly. But my word.
Leverkusen were able to field Mark Flekken, Jonas Hofmann, Victor Boniface and ex-United defender Timothy Fosu-Mensah in the starting XI for the friendly in Rio de Janeiro. However, the Bundesliga team found themselves 2-0 down within the first ten minutes of the match, before Flamengo were 4-0 up at half-time.
Flekken and Boniface were substituted off with just 36 minutes on the clock, with Niklas Lomb and Alejo Sarco their replacements. A sign perhaps that, already, all is not well.
Montrell Culbreath netted a consolation goal for Leverkusen in the dying minutes of their pre-season friendly.
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Ten Hag’s next assignment with Leverkusen is a warm-up match against German outfit Bochum next Saturday.
“The result looks bad, but I don’t really care about results in preseason,” he remarked. “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.”
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