#VamosWerkself – Day four: Foda and Kuntz call in

It's half-time at the training camp: Tuesday was day 04 in La Manga – the Werkself still have four days in Spain before leaving on Saturday 11 January.

"The conditions here are outstanding. The pitch is great and that's the most important thing. We are very happy," said Peter Bosz. "It's the first time for me at the training camp here. I do know the stadium at the La Manga Club as we played against Anderlecht here" (2016, Bosz was the Vitesse Arnhem coach, ed.). There will be two matches on Friday when the Werkself play FC Utrecht (kick-off: 14.00 CET) and then FC St Gallen (16.00 CET) at the hotel facility. The two other clubs are also based here for their training camps. Both matches will be broadcast live on bayer04.de, YouTube and Facebook.

Communication is the be-all and end-all

The conditions would have been outstanding back home in Leverkusen but it is good to get away for a week, said Bosz: "I like having the players around me 24 hours a day. I can talk to them the whole day. We have a lot of individual and team meetings. It's important for me to communicate with everybody on an individual basis."

There is also vocal communication on the pitch. The first session of the day, with set pieces centre stage, was held in the morning behind closed doors. In the afternoon, the Werkself showed their ability with football tennis. Four teams completed a short tournament – the winners were able to go straight onto the bus afterwards while the others had to do two laps of honour around the pitch. Both sessions were aimed at regeneration after yesterday's exhaustive training routine.

Post-training session

Most of the players hadn't had enough after the game so they did an extra session. Niklas Lomb and Kai Havertz grabbed the ball, Mitchell Weiser and Kerem Demirbay joined in. At the same time, Leon Bailey hit a couple of shots at goal as did Karim Bellarabi. Wendell appeared to have enough of the ball for today so he jumped on a bike and went for a ride on the grass.

Eyes on Baumgartlinger and Dragovic

The Austria coach Franco Foda called in on the Werkself training session today to take a closer look at his Austria team players Julian Baumgartlinger and Aleksandar Dragovic. The 53-year-old wore the Bayer 04 shirt from 1990 to 1994 making 140 appearances and scoring ten goals for the Werkself. After the afternoon session, Foda sat down with his two players in the hotel bar.

Baum and Kuntz look on

Not only the Austria FA observed the Werkself training session as the DFB were also there. Stefan Kuntz and Antonio di Salvo, his assistant coach with the U21 team, plus the U20 coach Manuel Baum watched today’s sessions as well as yesterday's. That led some members of the media to speculate that Kuntz might pick Kevin Volland for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. The European Championships winner of 1996 will have plenty of opportunities to see the strengths of our number 31 in the second half of the season. And it's not to be forgotten that the Germany U17s are also based at the La Manga Club.

Fernando Carro has arrived

Fernando Carro checked into the La Manga Club Resort this afternoon. The Bayer 04 CEO will stay to the end of the training camp in the south-east of his native Spain.

‘Who posts something like that!?’ with Pohjanpalo and Hradecky

Friday feelings on Wednesday!? That can't be right, I always have Friday feelings," quipped Lukas Hradecky in the game 'Who posts something like that!?'. We tested our players: Just based on a posted text, can they recognise which team-mates Instagram account it's from? See how our two Finns Joel Pohjanpalo and Lukas Hradecky puzzled over it on YouTube.