Benedikt Fernandez

Benedikt Fernandez (born January 8, 1985 in Bonn) is a Germany association football goalkeeper (association football) who plays for Bayer 04 Leverkusen. He is the son of a German mother and a Spain father.

Club career

Fernandez joined Bayer 04 Leverkusen's youth academy in 2000 and started playing for the club's reserve team in 2005. In 2006, he signed a professional contract with the club to play understudy to Hans-Jörg Butt and René Adler. He made his Fußball-Bundesliga debut on 10 February 2007 against Eintracht Frankfurt, coming on as a substitute following a red card to Hans-Jörg Butt. He made one more appearance in the Bundesliga that season before being replaced by René Adler, who went on to establish himself as the club's first-choice goalkeeper.

Following the departure of Hans-Jörg Butt in the summer of 2007, Fernandez became the second-choice goalkeeper in Leverkusen's first team, also continuing to occasionally play for the reserves. His first appearance for the first team in the 2007-08 season was his UEFA Cup debut against FC Zürich on 19 December 2007. He only made two further appearances with the first team thereafter, one in the Bundesliga and one in the UEFA Cup, deputising for the injured Adler in late February 2008.

Due to another injury to Adler, Leverkusen started their 2008-09 Bundesliga campaign with Fernandez in goal, with him subsequently making further three Bundesliga appearances before Adler returned to action in mid-September 2008.