When a fourth league football club in Germany hosts the current Bundesliga and German Cup winner and a team with a single loss in whole season, what are the expectations? Certainly not the advantage to the next round, but maybe to give it all in front of the packed stadium and hope for as less as possible goals in the net. And that‘s exactly what FC Carl Zeiss Jena tried to do and made it. The Regionalliga Nordost current leader managed to resist a combined Bayer Leverkusen squad until the 52nd minute, when former Borussia Dortmund and Monchenghadbach midfielder Jonas Hofmann finaly broke the deadlock and surprisingly remained the only scorer of the game: FC Carl Zeiss Jena – Bayer Leverkusen 0-1.Unlike the hosts, who made it all the way to the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup final back in 1981, when they knocked out sides like Roma and Valencia an then lost to Dinamo Tbilisi in the finals, Bayer‘s coach Xabi Alonso had a different agenda ahead of this match. First of all, off course, was a win and the second one was to introduce the newcomers to the club with German football. New signing Martin Terrier wasn‘t there, but both Jeanuël Belocian and Aleix García got their chances from the first minute. Only in the second half did he introduced Grimaldo, Xhaka, Wirtz and Frimpong and they used the game to get a light training in order to have a day off. So, three goals for this game, and all were realized.Centre-back carousel at Lever: one’s out, another inThe first (and only) chance worth reporting on was in the 30th minute, when Adli created a chance for himself but the ball went off the post. The second one was the only goal of the game. Grimaldo (who came in at halftime) came from the left side and made a wonderful cross finding the perfectly placed Hofmann on the six-yard line and it was an easy 1-0. There was no other option for Leverkusen but to win this game, as Jena‘s only chance was in the 94th minute, but young Muqaj couldn‘t turn the ball into an empty net.##NAJAVA_MECA_8298041##
