While Jörg Schmadtke has been with the Wolves in Portugal since the start of the winter training camp, he was joined by his management colleagues Michael Meeske and Dr. Tim Schumacher on Thursday evening. The trio were able to observe the final training session at ‘The CAMPUS’ on Friday morning and will stay with the team until after their friendly against HNK Rijeka on Saturday (kick-off 14:00 CET, live on the VfL Wolfsburg YouTube channel).
“Crucial phase”
Although the visiting pair have limited time with the squad, they both wanted to make the trip to the Algarve coast. “It’s important to me that we’re here together as managing directors,” commented Schumacher. “It’s obviously a crucial phase, right before the start of the second half of the season, and as a recently formed team we wanted to show unity and spend time together at the training camp.”
For Meeske, the newest member of the management trio having taken up his post in November of last year, the time in Almancil offers an added benefit. “The training camp is obviously a fantastic opportunity for me to better acquaint myself with the footballing side of things,” he said. “I’ve not had too many opportunities to do that since joining VfL, and there’s hardly any better environment for close contact than a training camp.”
Made use of ideal conditions
The session itself was the squad’s last in Almancil. They headed off to a paintballing team event on Friday afternoon before their stay in Portugal finishes with the friendly against Croatian top-flight outfit Rijeka tomorrow. Head coach Bruno Labbadia’s summary was a very positive one. “The facilities we had here are really top-notch,” he commented. “Because of the weather, we were able to do things here which would’ve been more difficult in Germany at the moment. The players have really thrown themselves into it, and so we’ve been able to implement what we wanted in ideal conditions.”
