{"id":90487,"date":"2025-08-23T17:33:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-23T17:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/90487\/"},"modified":"2025-08-23T17:33:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-23T17:33:13","slug":"european-football-erik-ten-hag-off-to-losing-start-as-hoffenheim-stun-leverkusen-european-club-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/90487\/","title":{"rendered":"European football: Erik ten Hag off to losing start as Hoffenheim stun Leverkusen | European club football"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Bayer Leverkusen suffered a shock 2-1 home loss to Hoffenheim in their Bundesliga season opener on Saturday to hand new coach Erik ten Hag a losing league debut.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Despite going 1-0 up, it was not the performance Dutchman Ten Hag, who replaced Xabi Alonso after the departures of star player Florian Wirtz, Jeremie Frimpong, Jonathan Tah and Granit Xhaka, had wanted.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The 2024 German domestic double winners and last season\u2019s runners-up lacked ideas and precision up front while their backline badly missed Tah\u2019s dominant presence.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Hoffenheim hit the post through Tim Lemperle after two minutes but Leverkusen scored first when Jarell Quansah headed in for a sixth-minute lead.<\/p>\n<p>Jarell Quansah\u2019s Diogo Jota tribute celebration after scoring for Bayer Leverkusen. Photograph: J\u00f6rg Sch\u00fcler\/Bayer 04 Leverkusen\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Fisnik Asllani, however, bagged a 25th-minute equaliser after beating keeper Mark Flekken and things got worse for the hosts seven minutes after the restart when Lemperle drilled in a low shot from 22 metres.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Leverkusen did not get a look-in for much of the second half until Nathan Tella fired into the side netting.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Champions Bayern Munich opened the Bundesliga season on Friday with a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/2025\/aug\/22\/european-football-harry-kane-hits-hat-trick-and-luis-diaz-off-the-mark-as-bayern-thrash-leipzig\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">6-0 demolition of RB Leipzig<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bayer Leverkusen suffered a shock 2-1 home loss to Hoffenheim in their Bundesliga season opener on Saturday to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-90487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}