Bayer Leverkusen confirmed it on Monday: Erik Ten HAG takes over the coaching job of Xabi Alonso. The latter is on the sidelines at Real Madrid in the new season.
The Dutchman HAG will be the new trainer in Leverkusen. The 55-year-old receives a contract with the Rhinelanders until 2027, like the football-Bundesliga club announced. He follows the successful coach Alonso, with which Bayer won the double from the championship and DFB Cup in the 2023/2024 season and also reached the final of the Europa League (0: 3 against Atalanta Bergamo). Alonso, on the other hand, competes with Carlo Ancelotti in Madrid and is real, where he also celebrated great success as a player, already coached at the club World Cup in the USA in mid-June.
Third Dutch Bayer coach
Since Leverkusen is the first team to march through an entire Bundesliga season in the double season, the footsteps left by Alonso are correspondingly great. At Bayer you are sure that he can fill them out: “With Erik Ten HAG we rely on an experienced coach with impressive sporting success. His six title gains with Ajax Amsterdam were extraordinary,” says Bayer Managing Director Simon Rolfes. And ten Hag, the Bayer “belongs to the extended European elite”, wants to confirm the most recently “grown ambitions” in Leverkusen.
I came to Leverkusen to confirm the ambitions that have grown in recent years.
Erik Ten HAG
Ten HAG stood next to CESC Fabregas, who was also traded as a coaching candidate, but now stays in Italy near Como, from the start at the top of the list at Bayer. Now the runner-up of the past season has agreed on a two-year contract with the 55-year-old. Rolfes was happy that it worked with Ten HAG after trying in vain to guide him from Amsterdam to Leverkusen in 2019.
The Dutchman was previously employed by Manchester United and had also sparked strong interest at Ajax Amsterdam for the coming season. According to the current coach of PSV Eindhoven Peter Bosz (from December 2018 to March 2021 at Bayer 04) and Rinus Michels (from July 1988 to April 1989), the third Dutch head coach of the Leverkusener will Bundesliga-History.
Successful in Amsterdam, released in Manchester
Ten HAG, who trained the second team of FC Bayern from 2013 to 2015, made an internationally important name between 2017 and 2022 when he worked extremely successfully with three championship titles and two cup triumphs at Ajax Amsterdam. He was then signed by Manchester United, which did not really work. Although he won the FA-Cup and the league cup once each two years of office, he was constantly criticized.
With technically demanding and dominant football, we want to continue to strive in the Bundesliga, DFB Cup and Champions League in the future.
Bayer Managing Director Simon Rolfes
In the 2024/25 season, Manchester United booked the worst start to the season since the 1989/90 season. After a 1-2 defeat against West Ham United on matchday 9, Ten Hag’s contract was terminated the following day, October 28, 2024. At this point, the club in the Premier League took 14th place in the table with three wins from nine games.
A big challenge is also waiting for him in Leverkusen because Alonso hung the bar there very high. The Spaniard helped the Leverkuseners to take off their vice-kuse image and wrote a success story that has not been existent to the club. Ten HAG is looking forward to the challenge: “It is an attractive task to build something together in this phase of upheaval and to develop an ambitious team.”
In addition to the development of a team, it is also about winning titles like in Amsterdam and Manchester. In Leverkusen, it was possible to “create a winning culture”, which is the basis for title.
Our sources:
- Bayer Leverkusen press conference for the presentation of Erik Ten Hag
- News agency dpa
