#VamosWerkself – Day one: Hello Palacios!

21 players plus their coaches and staff arrived at Cologne/Bonn airport around 9.30 in the morning – and the FC Köln sporting director Horst Heldt was in the middle of the group. Had he lost his way? Not quite: After a short chat with Rudi Völler and Simon Rolfes, the 50 year-old said his farewells and waited for another flight that was taking our rivals from along the Rhine to their training camp in Spain on Saturday morning. The Werkself charter flight, a Fokker 100, departed with a slight delay and landed safely in Murcia after a two and a half hour flight at 12.58 CET. The final leg of the journey to the team hotel was by coach.

Winter signing Exequiel Palacios was already there eagerly awaiting his new team-mates. The 21-year-old had arrived in the morning and was met by Carlos Sobarzo the head of integration at Bayer 04. He received another welcome in the lobby after the arrival of the Werkself team. In the afternoon, he received an equally warm welcome from his team-mates at the first session of the training camp on a training ground some 800 m from the hotel. The Argentinian completed his first full session with the players and immediately appeared to be in his element. Palacios will wear the number 25 shirt following on from Bernd Schneider. Schnix, Werkself honorary captain, wore the number 25 from 1999 to the end of his career in 2009. In the interim, the shirt number was used by goalkeepers: Both Dario Kresic (2014/16) and Andrés Palop (2013/14) had that squad number.

Karim Bellarabi did not take part in training as he was sidelined with tonsillitis. Leon Bailey plus Lucas Alario, Wendell and Charles Aránguiz were also absent – they had another day off and were due to arrive on Sunday morning. "The head coach decided they should arrive a day later. At the end of the day they had very long journeys with connecting flights," explained Simon Rolfes. The rest of the Werkself and the two U19 players Ayman Azhil and Marcel Lotka started the week of training in the afternoon with the temperature of 15 degrees and plenty of sunshine – it almost felt like spring on the pitch.

The fact a training camp was being held in the winter break for the first time in three years was also due to a request from coach Peter Bosz as Rolfes revealed: "Peter likes to do that in the winter break. If the weather is okay in Germany you do have good conditions at home. But there's nothing wrong in getting away for a week. The break is short so we want to find our rhythm as quickly as possible and get up to speed fast. It's important for us to rediscover our game mode quickly."

At the end of the week there will be a double matchday. The Werkself have friendlies against FC Utrecht (Friday, 14.00 CET) and FC St Gallen (Friday, 16.00 CET). The Dutch team are also in the same hotel as Bayer 04 as are the Ajax U23 players. It's highly unlikely the teams will get in each other's way: The huge complex has eight grass pitches that conform to FIFA standards. A lot of big clubs have previously used the La Manga Club Resort – Real Madrid, Barcelona, Liverpool and the Bundesliga sides Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich have all held training camps on the Costa Cálida.