Plea makes his return to team training

The Foals are now in the final stretch of pre-season training. The first session on Monday saw Alassane Plea return to training with the team for the first time.

The Foals’ approach for the last week of pre-season training is clear: “We’ve done some very good work over the past few weeks, so now we’re just fine tuning,” said head coach Marco Rose. The first competitive match of the season for Borussia will be in the DFB-Pokal against FC Oberneuland at BORUSSIA-PARK, which kicks off on Saturday at 15:30 CEST. Following the start of this week’s training, it is still unclear which players will be available for selection against the Regionalliga side from Bremen. This is down to the participation of Matthias Ginter, Florian Neuhaus, Yann Sommer, Michael Lang, Nico Elvedi, Breel Embolo and Jan Olschowsky in international fixtures yesterday, as well as Stefan Lainer and Hannes Wolf who will be representing their countries on Monday and Tuesday evening respectively.

Involvement in the DFB-Pokal encounter is also in doubt for some players who are not on international duty. After Marcus Thuram made a partial return to team training last week already, Alassane Plea followed suit on Monday. "I hope that Marcus in particular will be able to take part on Saturday. Lasso may also be an option, but we’re not going to take any risks with him," emphasised Rose. Denis Zakaria continues to make progress, but is not yet in contention for Saturday. The same applies to Valentino Lazaro (calf), László Bénes (ankle), Andreas Poulsen (shoulder), and Julio Villalba (muscular issue).

Borussia have four more training sessions planned this week. On Tuesday, the Foals will hit the weight room in the morning, before taking to the pitch at 15:00 CEST. Wednesday’s session will take place behind closed doors, while on Thursday (10:00 CEST) and Friday (15:30 CEST), Rose will have the players out on the pitch just once each day.