#VamosWerkself – Day five: Volland at the Olympics?

It’s not the most pleasant start to a morning but what has to be, has to be: After breakfast, the players had to have a blood sample taken from their ears – for a so-called Creatine-Kinase (CK) test. The CK value is used to determine muscle damage in performance diagnostics – “With intensive sprints, as in the fitness session on Monday, there are minute muscle injuries – popularly known as sore muscles,” explained the Bayer 04 club doctor Philipp Ehrenstein. “Given the injured muscle mass it is possible to draw conclusions on how much individual players are tired by training or how fit they are. We took measurements yesterday to see what the levels were. Today, two days after the session, we’ll see how much the levels have dropped and how quickly the players have recovered.” The results enable control of the workloads according to individual needs.

After yesterday’s training session was aimed at recovery, the tempo increased today. Passing and positional play were again centre stage. With calls from the coach of “Everyone keep moving” or “Press, press, press!” Nadiem Amiri, Kai Havertz and Co. were kept on their toes.

‘I’d be really keen to take part in the Olympics”

Following the visits of the Germany U21 coach Stefan Kuntz and Austria coach Franco Foda to watch the Werkself in the past few days, there were more familiar faces among the people watching from the touchline: The former Bayer 04 player Jan-Ingwer Callsen-Bracker made the step up from the youth teams to the Werkself senior squad in 2003 and he played for the Black and Reds for five years. Callsen-Bracker retired in the summer after spells at Mönchengladbach, Kaiserslautern and Augsburg and is now working for the DFB in the newly-created in neuro athletics at the DFB Academy. He was joined in La Manga by the former Bundesliga goalkeeper Marc Ziegler who is currently working for the DFB as goalkeeper coordinator.  

The players spread out in the hotel after lunch – most were involved in interviews as it was the big media day. Bayer 04 TV had Daley Sinkgraven and Exequiel Palacios in front of the cameras; Lukas Hradecky and Julian Baumgartlinger fielded questions from the travelling print journalists.  Kevin Volland revealed an interesting detail in an interview: “I’m really keen to play for my country and take part in the Olympics. It would be really good if it works out.” Having just mentioned the U21 national coach… Have the DFB already been in contact? – “Yes, Stefan Kuntz had a quick word with me asking if I might be interested. It would fit in well this year…” Kuntz can take three players to Tokyo who were born before 1997. Perhaps, we can look forward to Volland wearing the Germany shirt again! 

High speed on the race track

Julian Baumgartlinger said there is a great atmosphere amongst the team. And what has to be done to maintain that? Exactly – go-kart racing! The Werkself headed to the go-kart track at Murcia today for a team-building activity. Helmets on, into the kart and pedal to the floor –  that certainly got the adrenalin flowing. Karim Bellarabi, Kerem Demirbay plus Leon Bailey and Peter Bosz were all into it but Ramazan ‘Rambo’ Özcan and Jonathan Tah led the way – both secured top spot in their groups with the fastest laps. 

Happy Birthday, Kalle!

Karl-Heinrich Dittmar, medical director at Bayer 04, today celebrates his birthday. The 57-year-old was presented with a cake and many warm birthday greetings from Fernando Carro, Rudi Völler, Simon Rolfes and Co. And we also wish him a very happy birthday.