The Wolves were put through their paces again on Wednesday at their training camp in Portugal, with head coach Bruno Labbadia maintaining the heavy workload.
For the fourth time in seven days, the Green-Whites got through three sessions in one day. After some stabilisation work to begin with, the Wolves were out on the pitch twice in the morning and afternoon at ‘The CAMPUS’ on the Algarve coast.
Small pitch, large pitch and more running
After working on their fitness in the first morning session, the Wolves then moved to a small pitch for various training drills. The afternoon session was dominated by practice games, but this time on a full-size pitch for the most part. They weren’t done there, though, as Labbadia finished off the session with a half-hour jog around the campus.
Schäfer sees ‘fire and passion’
Someone who’s familiar with this routine from many a previous training camp is VfL sporting director Marcel Schäfer, for whom the Almancil camp is his first in an official capacity with the club. “I’m not as sad about not being able to take part myself now,” smiled the 34-year-old. “I think it’s really good how the lads are getting stuck in here. You notice that in little things, and they’re obviously the things that help you have a successful second half of the season. There may be the odd niggly foul but that shows to me that the guys want to win, even if they’re just playing a small-sided game or football tennis. It’s always important to have that fire and passion in there. We’re seeing that here and we saw it in the first half of the season.”
