Stindl back in team training – Foals begin preparation for the derby

The Foals began their preparations on Tuesday afternoon for the Bundesliga game on Sunday (15:30 CEST) against 1. FC Köln.

In a few days, the derby will take place at Köln’s Rhein-Energie-Stadion, and the Borussia players are already looking forward to the game against their archrivals. “It is a special game for the club, for us and for our fans and a game that we obviously definitely want to win,” said captain Lars Stindl, who had returned to the pitch for the start of the training week following illness and a foot injury. “It was obviously not ideal that Lars missed a week, but now he’s back and there is definitely still enough time until Sunday, so I expect that he will be available,” said Daniel Farke.

Borussia’s head coach was able to work with a group of twelve outfield players in total, with Yvandro Sanches Borges the only player on international duty to have returned so far. Marcus Thuram (France), Ramy Bensebaini (Algeria) and Joe Scally (USA) played yesterday. Ko Itakura played for Japan in the morning, Jonas Omlin and Nico Elvedi (both Switzerland), Luca Netz (Germany U21s), Manu Koné (France U21s) and Oscar Fraulo (Denmark U21s) still have internationals to play on Tuesday evening. “The boys are coming back bit by bit. On Thursday, everyone will be back here, but definitely a few of them will still just be working on recovery. I expect the whole group back in team training for the first time on Friday,” said Farke. Julian Weigl (syndesmosis ligament rupture) and Tony Jantschke (meniscus tear) are both still in light training and are still training individually.

The Foals have four further training sessions on the pitch this week ahead of the derby, with the sessions on Wednesday (10:45 CEST) and Thursday (15:45 CEST) open to the public, and the last two on Friday (10:45 CEST) and Saturday (16:00 CEST) behind closed doors, as is the afternoon session on Wednesday (15:45 CEST) in the Performance Center.