Bayer Leverkusen

FC Bayer was founded on July 15, 1904 in Leverkusen. Since 1907 the club was a member of a body where athletes and other sportsmen fought against each other. It was only in 1928 that the football wing left the sport community. From the beginning till 1930s Bayer played in 3rd and 4th leagues of Germany. In 1936 the club managed to get to the second league (region West).

In 1951 Bayer won the first amateur league of western region and got to the strongest German league.

In its first season in the German Oberliga West the club played extremely successfully and finished 6th. In 1955 it was a bronze winner, which is actually the highest achievement in the club’s history. The following year Bayer had to leave top division finishing 15th. It returned there only in 1962 and finished the season on the 9th position.

From 1963 Bayer began playing in the professional league. It participated in the West region championship for 10 long seasons. As a rule, the team played not quite good being in the bottom of the final ranking.

In 1928 Bayer won the championship of Western league but couldn’t defeat Kickers Offenbach in play off and was forced to come back to the local championship.

From 1973 till 1975 the club played in amateur championship of middle Rhine. After winning both of the championships they got promoted to Bundesliga 2 and in 1976 the team debuted there and finished in the middle of the table.

After winning the tournament in 1989 Bayer won this championship and went directly to Bundesliga becoming a powerful opponent to any team. In 1988 the club won the UEFA Cup. A player that should be marked out was goalkeeper Bernd Dreher.

In 1993 the club triumphed in the German Cup beating Hertha from Berlin in the final.

Counting from 1996 Bayer has been a 4 times Bundesliga runner-up, finished third and fourth once. In 2000 the team was as close to the victory as never before but they failed at the very end of the season.

The following spring turned out to be even more disappointing with Bayer hardly surviving in the top division despite reaching the Champions League final the same season conceding to Real Madrid only.