It was a heart stopping moment for Werder’s Markus Rosenberg. The 25 year old striker suffered an injury to his left knee whist training with the Swedish national side in Stengssund at the weekend: “It makes the battle for a place even more difficult for me,” explained Rosenberg following the pre-tournament set-back.
Luckily for Werder Bremen’s top scorer of the recently ended season, the Swedish team doctor, Anders Wallentin, was able to give Rosenberg some good news as the results of an MRI scan showed no signs of any serious damage to the knee or the ligaments. ‘Rosi’ was back on the Swedish bench again on Monday, 26.05.2008, as the Scandinavian’s beat Slovenia 1:0 in a friendly game, but, as a caution, he was not used as a substitute.
The Green-Whites midfielder Tim Borowski had to battle long and hard for his place in the German European Championship squad but his efforts were eventually rewarded with a nomination from trainer Joachim Loew and his coaching team. Unfortunately the man from Neubrandenburg has been unable to take any part in the national team training camp on Mallorca due to influenza.
Euro 2008 co-hosts Austria notched up a 4:1 win at the weekend against Kuba. The game was curiously broken into three 35 minute periods and during the second of those, Werder’s Martin Harnik was to prove provider for Erwin Hoffer, who made it intermittently 3:1.
Ivan Klasnic was involved up front in the second half of Croatia’s 1:0 win over Moldova. The only goal of the game was scored during the first period by Niko Kovac.