Foals turn their focus to first competitive game of the season

Borussia began their final week of training on Tuesday ahead of the start of the 2021/22 season, which begins on Monday, 9th August in the first round of the DFB-Pokal at 1. FC Kaiserslautern (20:45 CEST).

In just six days time, the Foals will play their first competitive match of the new season. Adi Hütter’s first game in charge is away to 1. FC Kaiserslautern in the first round of the DFB-Pokal (20:45 CEST) at the famous ‘Betzenberg’. “The cup game at Kaiserslautern is an interesting start to my reign here,” said Hütter. “I’m looking forward to both this game and the opening Bundesliga match at home to Bayern.”

From Tuesday, his Gladbach team will be fine tuning ahead of that Pokal clash. Their final week of training beforehand began today, with two sessions completed. The first focused more on fitness, while the players were out on the pitch in the afternoon, mainly working on their play with the ball in small drills.

Denis Zakaria (recently recovered from Covid-19), Mamadou Doucouré (rehabilitation after tearing his Achilles tendon), Ramy Bensebaini (thigh), Alassane Plea (knee), Manu Koné (MCL), Jonas Hofmann (rehabilitative training) and Breel Embolo (thigh) were all missing from training on Tuesday.

“Otherwise it was a good session today,” added Hütter. “We obviously need to improve on a few things, partly because players who were on international duty over the summer only just returned to training last week. We need to make sure we act as a team on the pitch, work on how we want to play with the ball and also without it. These will be important things in the coming week.”

The Foals will train five times this week: Wednesday (10:30 CEST), twice on Friday (fitness session in the morning, on the pitch at 16:00 CEST), Saturday (10:30 CEST) and Sunday. “We’re going to have Thursday off because it’s a long week before the game. After that, we’ll work a lot on tactics, both regarding our own game and the opponents’,” revealed Hütter.