In addition to the two lost points in the 2-2 draw in Bremen, there was a second piece of bad news for Bayer 04 on Saturday: the double winners fear for Jeanuel Belocian, who was absent from the squad for the game on the Weser due to a foot injury.
His name was already missing from the match sheet for the game at Werder Bremen. So instead of Jeanuel Belocian, Leverkusen’s third goalkeeper Niklas Lomb found a place in the 20-man squad of the German double winner. An indication that the personnel situation at the factory club is currently not optimal.
Belocian caught it in the final training session
After Amine Adli, who suffered a fibula fracture in the 1-1 Champions League draw at Stade Brest and will be out until January 2025 after his operation, Bayer is now facing the prospect of the young left-back being out of action. The 19-year-old, who joined Leverkusen from Stade Rennes in a 15 million euro transfer this summer, was struck down in Friday’s final training session.
“He has a foot injury. We don’t yet know how serious it is,” explained coach Xabi Alonso after the 2-2 draw at Werder Bremen, ‘he had a few problems in training, so we decided not to include him in the squad.’ The exact diagnosis has not yet been made, and so the length of time for which Belocian will not be available to the Leverkusen head coach is, of course, also unclear.
But even if Xabi Alonso (“I’m no doctor”) was unable to provide any information about the exact nature of the injury after the game, he explained the length of the absence: “It’s a bit complicated. We don’t yet know how long it will take.”
A longer absence of Belocians, who so far in the course of the relatively moderate rotation this season was only in the starting lineup for the first-round match in the DFB Cup in Jena (1-0) and in the 4-3 win against Wolfsburg in the Bundesliga, does not represent a blow for Bayer. But in the uninterrupted English weeks that are already underway in the fall, Xabi Alonso would then have one less alternative than Adli to help him better distribute the load in the squad.