Former Manchester United saw his Bayer Leverkusen side thrashed 5-1 by Flamengo under-20s on Friday
21:47, 18 Jul 2025Updated 21:49, 18 Jul 2025
Erik ten Hag saw his Bayer Leverkusen side beaten easily(Image: Photo by Jörg Schüler/Bayer 04 Leverkusen via Getty Images)
Former Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag suffered a shockl start to life at Bayer Leverkusen after the Bundesliga outfit were thrashed 5-1 by Flamengo’s under-20s side on Friday night.
The Dutchman, who was appointed as Xabi Alonso’s successor at Leverkusen last month, was overseeing his first game in management since he was sacked by United after a 2-1 defeat to West Ham United in October.
But his return to the dugout was as ill-fated as his final days at Old Trafford, as he watched his new tean comprehensively beaten by the Brazilian side, with German media outlet Bild branding the game ‘a debacle’.
Leverkusen, of course, are still getting to grips with life without Florian Wirtz, Jeremie Frimpong and Jonathan Tah, who all departed the Bundesliga side at the end of the season and the game, after all, was only a friendly.
However, Leverkusen were still able to name Mark Flekken, Jonas Hofmann, Victor Boniface and former United midfielder Timothy Fosu-Mensah in the starting XI for the friendly in Rio de Janeiro.
The Bundesliga side, though, found themselves 2-0 down inside the opening ten minutes of the game, with Matheus Goncalves scoring his second of the game and Pedro Leao his first to put Flamengo 4-0 ahead at the break.
And things went from bad to worse almost immediately after the restart as Gusttavo scored the Brazilian outfit’s fifth of the game.
Montrell Culbreath scored a consolation goal for Leverkusen inside the final 20 minutes of the pre-season friendly.
Next up for Ten Hag at Leverkusen is a friendly against German side Bochum next Saturday.
“The result looks bad, but I don’t really care about results in preseason,” he said. “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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