The Foals began a new week of training without the ten players called up for their national teams on Tuesday, and Manu Koné will be taking it steady over the next few days.
Head coach Adi Hutter had a smaller group of nine outfield players and three goalkeepers to take charge of at the start of this new week of training. “There are always fewer players at training during the international break, but we can still work hard and do some good things in smaller-group sessions and also do some fitness training,” commented head coach Adi Hütter. Gladbach have three further training sessions scheduled for this week: on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, all beginning at 10.30 CEST.
The ten Foals away on international duty are as follows: Matthias Ginter, Jonas Hofmann, Florian Neuhaus (all Germany), Yann Sommer, Nico Elvedi, Denis Zakaria, Breel Embolo (all Switzerland), Luca Netz, Jordan Beyer (both Germany U21s) and Conor Noß (Ireland U21s). Joe Scally has been given some time off to rest after a busy few weeks, Ramy Bensebaini is still unable to take part in team training due to his foot injury and so is taking part in individual sessions, and it is still unconfirmed as to whether he will join up with the Algerian national team. Marcus Thuram (recovery following his knee injury) is also training individually, whilst Stefan Lainer (ankle) and Mamadou Doucouré (achilles) are still in recovery.
Manu Koné, who had to be substituted off in the 60th minute of last weekend’s 3-1 away win against Wolfsburg will be taking things easy over the next couple of days. “He’s aggravated an old injury, but his knee is still okay,” explained Hütter. “We’ll try and integrate Manu back into training in some way before the end of the week. He still needs to physically recover a little bit, particularly concerning his basic endurance, so this week has come at a good time for him.”
