Erik ten Hag said Bayer Leverkusen’s decision to dismiss him after just two Bundesliga matches in charge came as a complete surprise and that the club’s hierarchy had not shown enough trust in him.<\/p>\n
Leverkusen lost their opening league fixture 2-1 at home to TSG Hoffenheim before drawing 3-3 against 10-man Werder Bremen on Saturday, leading to the 55-year-old Dutchman’s abrupt departure on Monday.<\/p>\n
Ten Hag, who had been out of management since his sacking by Manchester United in October last year, replaced Xabi Alonso in May on a two-year contract after the Spaniard left to take over at Real Madrid.<\/p>\n
“The decision by Bayer Leverkusen’s management this morning to put me on a leave of absence came as a complete surprise. To part ways with a coach after just two league matches is unprecedented,” Ten Hag said in a statement posted by his agency on social media on Monday.<\/p>\n
Under Alonso, Leverkusen secured the double in the 2023-24 season as they lifted their first Bundesliga title without losing a game, won the German Cup and reached the Europa League final.<\/p>\n
But Leverkusen’s summer exodus of key players Florian Wirtz, Jeremie Frimpong, Jonathan Tah, Granit Xhaka and Amine Adli made Ten Hag’s task of building on Alonso’s success an uphill battle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Erik ten Hag said Bayer Leverkusen’s decision to dismiss him after just two Bundesliga matches in charge came as a complete surprise and that the club’s hierarchy had not shown enough trust in him. Leverkusen lost their opening league fixture 2-1 at home to TSG Hoffenheim before drawing 3-3 against 10-man Werder Bremen on Saturday, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53737,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53736"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53738,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53736\/revisions\/53738"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}