There was certainly no denying that the people of Schruns had made an effort. As the Werder team bus rolled up to the ‘Löwen-Hotel’, speakers in the courtyard blasted out a German summer hit, there were alcohol free Piña Coladas for everyone and even the sun put in an appearance - something that proved an absolute rarity on Norderney. “That’s really something nice,” beamed coach Thomas Schaaf.
Werder Bremen’s second training camp of their pre-season preparations is set to get underway at 5:30pm on Wednesday afternoon. On his arrival, Schaaf received the news that Per Mertesacker’s knee operation had gone well and that there was no further damage to report.
Unfortunately the news has no influence on the fact that the central defenders meniscus injury will keep him out of the reckoning for several weeks. With that in mind, the subject of ‘Central-defenders’ was pushed way up the agenda on the training schedule.
According to Thomas Schaaf, “in Schruns we will need to do a lot of tactical work, which hasn’t been a possibility until now.” Several players are only now returning to full team training due to summer international duty, such as the three German players who only re-joined their team mates at the beginning of the week.