Bundesliga
Echeverri joins Leverkusen on loan
Bayer Leverkusen have signed Claudio Echeverri from Manchester City on a season-long loan, the club have confirmed.
The 19-year-old is Leverkusen's 13th signing of the summer as Erik ten Hag continues to fine-tune his squad for the 2025/26 campaign.
“Claudio Echeverri is a technically strong, energetic player who is very dynamic and causes problems between the lines,” said Leverkusen's director of sport Simon Rolfes. “He's a fine footballer – a very good dribbler who drives towards goal and always uses his teammates to his advantage. Football fans come to the stadium for players like Claudio.”
“It's fantastic that I can take my next steps with the 2024 German champions, in the Bundesliga and the Champions League,” added Echeverri. “I want to play a lot here and develop into an even better player week by week. Many young professionals have already made it to the top of the global game at Bayer Leverkusen. I want to follow that path in the coming season and help us achieve great things with Bayer 04.”
Argentinian Echeverri is a talented attacking midfielder who has impressed for his country at youth level. He scored five goals and provided three assists as Argentina's U17s finished third at the South American Championship in 2023, while he added another five goals at the 2023 U-17 World Cup, where he was named as the tournament's third-best player.
He has three City appearances to his name and scored his first goal for the club at the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup in a 6-0 victory over Al-Ain.
Echeverri is the latest new addition after Jarrell Quansah, Malik Tillman, Ibrahim Maza, Mark Flekken, Ernest Poku, Christian Kofane, Abdoulaye Faye, Janis Blaswich, Tim Oermann, Farid Alfa-Ruprecht, Axel Tape and Issa Traoré.
This comes after head coach Xabi Alonso and star players Florian Wirtz, Granit Xhaka, Lukáš Hrádecký, Jeremie Frimpong and Jonathan Tah departed over the past few months.
Leverkusen started their season with a 4-0 DFB Cup first-round victory over Sonnenhof Großaspach, and the latest addition to the squad could make his debut for the Werkself in their 2025/26 Bundesliga curtain-raiser at home against Hoffenheim this Saturday (kick-off: 3.30pm CEST).