Former Ajax head coach Erik ten Hag has been sacked by his new club Bayer Leverkusen just two matches into the German league season.

The German club have taken just one point from their opening matches, having surrendered a 3-1 lead to 10-man Werder Bremen in the final minutes of Saturday’s match.

In a statement, Leverkusen’s sporting director Simon Rolfes said: “The past few weeks have shown that building a new and successful team with this setup is not feasible,” while CEO Fernando Carro said the decision to part company with Ten Hag was “painful, but we felt it was necessary.”

The decision was taken by the shareholders’ committee on the recommendation of the club’s management. The current backroom staff will take on the coaching duties until a successor can be found.

Ten Hag had been charged with rebuilding the team following a summer sell-off of experienced stars including Lukas Hradecky and Granit Xhaka, a player the Dutchman had gone on record as saying he wanted to keep.

On Monday the club completed the transfer of Moroccan winger Eliesse Ben Seghir from Monaco for €32 million, Leverkusen’s third major signing of the summer following the arrival of Jarell Quansah from Liverpool and Malik Tillman from PSV Eindhoven, but it came too late to save the coach.

Ten Hag left Ajax for Manchester United in 2022 after winning the Eredivisie title three times in four seasons (they also topped the table in the unfinished coronavirus season of 2020/21) and reaching the Champions League semi-final in 2019, losing in the last minute to Tottenham Hotspur.

But he was unable to match the high expectations at Old Trafford. Although he led the team to a third-place finish in his first season and won the EFL Cup, his record was blemished by a 7-0 defeat to bitter rivals Liverpool.

In his second season United finished eighth and won the FA Cup, but Ten Hag was dismissed in October 2024 after the club’s worst start to a league season in 35 years.