Feldkirchen Day 2: “Stani” gets involved

“The early bird gets the biggest worm”, stated Holger Stanislawski as he sent his side on their way. After a sumptuous breakfast buffet, the players took to the pitch where Stanislawski spent 45 minutes giving out orders, firing up his team and criticising where necessary, which his players seemed to react well to. The 11-vs-11 training match ran like a well oiled machine with Ibisevic and Babel loitering in front of Tom Starke's goal and Sigurdsson and Tagoe tasked with testing Daniel Haas down the other end. The team were encouraged and challenged to vary their approach to getting the ball up to the front men in order to create goalscoring opportunities.

Weis, Schipplock, Simunic and Zuculini training separately

On the other pitch, fitness coaches Christof Elser and Yannick Obenauer worked with Tobias Weis, Sven Schipplock, Josip Simunic and Franco Zuculini on an individual level as they continue to work themselves back to full fitness. Weis has almost fully recovered from his muscle injury, which allowed Elser to put him through his paces with drills to test his passing accuracy and agility. “If Tobias's body can cope with the stress, he should be able to take part in full training again starting as soon as this afternoon”, explained the fitness coach after the first session.

Meanwhile, Zuculini, Simunic and Schipplock were not as lucky and instead spent most of the day working on their core with medicine ball exercises in an attempt to develop their strength and power, before working on their coordination and athleticism with a few football orientated exercises.

An intense afternoon session

Training in the afternoon took on a completely different approach, as the goalkeepers went off to complete their individual routines, while new head coach Holger Stanislawski once again pushed his players to their limit. “Everything you're doing is in preparation for August 6th”, were Stanislawski's words to his charges as he got them fired up. Tobias Weis did join in during the afternoon and was pleased to have come through without any concerns. “It was incredibly brutal, but I'm glad that the torn muscle seems to be holding up well. Now I can get back to work”, stated Weis.