Anticipation amongst the fans, the team and, of course, the coaching staff ahead of the new Bundesliga season is huge, and hard work is being done in Zillertal in the hope of a successful campaign. One day after Werder’s 2-1 friendly victory over Karlsruher SC, recovery was of course on the agenda, and Ole Werner and some of his coaching staff found themselves with some questions to answer from fans who were invited to a Q&A session.
The panel, made up of head coach Ole Werner, assistant coaches Patrick Kohlmann, Hannes Drews and Tom Cichon and goalkeeping coach Christian Vander, were in a good mood, which came as no surprise after new signing Oli Burke’s debut double saw Werder to a 2-1 win in their friendly against KSC. However, despite their good mood, one thing was certainly clear: there’s still a lot of work to be done ahead of Werder’s first competitive fixture if SVW are to play successful football. “We want to go into our campaign in the top flight with real enthusiasm. We need to take the momentum and euphoria of promotion with us and make sure we know what our strengths are. We’ll be facing some top-quality Bundesliga sides, and it’ll be important that we know what we can do well. We must never lost confidence, even though our results as a promoted side may not be what we’re hoping for during the first two or three weeks,” said Ole Werner.
The head coach added that they’ll need to make some adjustments ahead of his side’s return to the top flight. “The way football is played in this league is slightly different. Being compact without the ball will be very important for us, and we’ve already been working on that here at camp. Tactically speaking, our approach to matches in the first division will differ to that of the second division.” Once again, his personal goal is to create a recognisable style of play: “I’d like people to be able to recognise the style of football we play in the Bundesliga. Even if we’re playing in yellow or without names and numbers on the back of our shirts, you should be able to tell it’s Werder Bremen that are playing, because a team identity is something very important.”
New players have already been found to try and achieve this: Alongside Dikeni Salifou, Niklas Stark, Amos Pieper, Jens Stage and Oliver Burke, Lee Buchanan joined the team on Sunday. Assistant coach Tom Cichon commented on the importance of the training camp for the new players: “The camp gives the new signings the opportunity to get to understand our playing style quickly, as well as our playing philosophy, which we’ve cemented some time ago, can be taught and shown to the new additions. We’ll be using a variety of methods to do that, because each player learns in a different way.”
Hannes Drews touched upon the important experiences the younger players present at the training camp, such as Jascha Brandt, Lasse Rosenboom or Mio Backhaus, will pick up in Zillertal: “The young lads will also get the chance to understand the tactics of the first team here at the training camp. On the other hand, us coaches are also looking out for how they perform and behave. Most of all though, they should take away as much as they can from their experience and take the chance to learn from the experienced players.”
Goalkeeping coach Christian Vander stood up for Jiri Pavlenka when he was faced with a question about the error made in the first half against KSC, taking the question on the chin with a touch of humour: “Of course we’ll be adding throwing drills to the training plan,” he laughed. “On the whole, Jiri Pavlenka is good at throwing the ball to his teammates and opening up play. Of course, some don’t always reach the target, but that is to be expected against a well-organised side. When evaluating goalkeepers, it’s always good to look at how often their passes reach their intended targets.”
Patrick Kohlmann summarised the general anticipation and excitement ahead of the new Bundesliga season: “We’re looking forward to our first competitive match against Cottbus in the DFB-Pokal, but of course we’re also really excited to get back to the Bundesliga. We played in the second division last year, something which we’d have preferred not to have done, but we dropped down a division, had success and can now turn our attention towards the grand fixtures of the first tier.”
