At around 8pm on Tuesday, 07.08.2007, Werder Bremen’s preparations for the 2007/2008 season will have effectively come to an end. At that time the players will hear what will be the final whistle of their final pre-season friendly game against Danish first division side Esbjerg fB. The game will kick-off at 6pm at the Egsfield Ground from Horne FS. Horne is a small community on the island of Fünen, a suburb of the 8,000 inhabitant town of Faborg. Every year a local organisation there organises a ‘Fodboldfestival’ and have managed to attract some big names like the FC Liverpool ‘Old Boys’ and the Danish national team.
“We’ve been trying to coax Werder Bremen into visiting Horne for many years now”, explained Karsten Petersen, one of the organisers of the 2007 event. “It’s a north German club that play attractive, attacking football and scores many goals. People like that and enjoy watching such teams.” Werder Bremen also sport a number of Scandinavians within their ranks. With Daniel Jensen and Leon Andreasen, there are two Danish internationals. Markus Rosenberg is a star in Sweden whilst Petri Pasanen is a long time first choice player in the Finnish national team.
Thomas Schaaf’s men can expect to be faced with an offensively minded Esbjerg side. The Esbjerg fB team have a long journey ahead of them too with Esbjerg lying way up on the north-west coast of Denmark – Fünen is in the south-east. Despite the fact that the Danish league is well underway, fB trainer Troels Bech is only too happy to accept the appointment. He sees it as a possibility to “Test ourselves against the big boys.” Although they picked up five Danish championships during the sixties, the club are no longer considered one of the stronger outfits in Denmark. The club have been through the mill and during the nineties were left staring bankruptcy in the face. Times have changes and the club have managed to regain their footing and have been part of the 12 team ‘SAS Ligaen’ since 2001. They have developed into a solid mid-table side and even managed a third spot in 2004 and will finish at least sixth this time around.
They have made a promising start and are currently in third place after four games. They beat top club Bröndby 1:0, then won 5:0 against Viborg FF before crawing 2:2 with Aarhus GF. On Sunday they suffered their first defeat, losing 1:3 to table toppers Randers. A respectable beginning! Naldo and Per Mertesacker should be wary of Rajko Lekic. The striker scored a hat-trick in his first game. “Esbjerg is one of those clubs who like to cause an up-set. They are a positive, aggressive side and you can never really know what to expect”, said Karsten Petersen.
Attractive football is in the air then and at pitch level everything is in order too with the pitch in Horne at the Egsfield Stadium apparently in ‘Super’ condition. Somewhere between 2,500 and 4,000 fans are expected to be on hand to view Werder’s dress rehearsal for the Bundesliga start.