The Foals got work during the international break underway today, with a 90 minute session on Tuesday morning. Christoph Kramer made a return to partial training for the first time, following his illness.
With the international break, there is no competitive game coming for Borussia this weekend. This set of national team games will not involve UEFA sides, though: All other continental football associations will take part in World Cup qualifiers or, in the case of African nations, the knockout stages of the AFCON, which Ramy Bensebaini and Algeria were eliminated from in the group phase. For the Foals, this means that there is around two weeks of preparation before Bundesliga matchday 21, a trip to Arminia Bielefeld on Saturday February 5th. Head coach Adi Hütter has almost the entire squad available for the game as of now.
Hofmann in recovery mode
The Foals and Adi Hütter will be without Lars Stindl for the foreseeable future. The captain suffered an injury to the MCL ligament in his knee last week in training. Also missing from the near-90 minute training session on Tuesday morning at BORUSSIA-PARK was Jonas Hofmann. The wide man completed a recovery session after making his return from five weeks out with a knee injury, starting and playing 80 minutes in Borussia’s latest game at home to Union Berlin. “We’ve given him a day of recovery today because of that. I’m expecting him to be back with the rest of the squad tomorrow,” said Hütter. After his return from the Africa Cup of Nations, Rami Bensebaini will also be expected to return to training alongside Hofmann on Wednesday.
Bénes back to full training, Kramer returns partially
László Bénes was able to take part in the whole session today, after his short injury layoff. Christoph Kramer also completed part of the session following his illness, finishing off with a run. “I’m happy that we’ve got more or less every player back here and that there are no cases of lots of players going off on international duty. We’re going to use these two weeks intensively to prepare for our upcoming taks as well as we can,” said the Foals head coach. Five more training sessions await Hütter’s team this week; a double session tomorrow from 10:30 and 15:00 CET, and single sessions on Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 10:30 CET.
