Ascona Diary: Bungee Jumping Journalists

Here’s a short and quick pre-match round up of training camp related news.

As you can see from the photo, the players are having fun – lots of fun – during training. Though, given that those photos come from the few sessions, where the team opens up to the press, it could just as well all be a big act to fool the outside world. Because most of what happens and what is being worked on still is just for Jogi’s eyes only.

The DFB has acknowledged that this is a sub-optimal situation for the horde of journalists who have made Ascona their Euro base camp as well. So they thought of ways to entertain them, while Jogi briefs his team on the strengths and weaknesses of Luca Modric. They came up with the idea to send the journalists to a nearby dam and have them jump into the abyss. I sense a lot of wishful thinking in that idea. Though, there were no reports of elastic ropes, that were accidentally too long or any such thing, so supposedly all journalists survived the bungee experience.

Hertha’s Arne Friedrich has once again been praised. This time it wasn’t Philipp Lahm bowing to the ping pong king, it was Jogi Löw, who was very impressed by his performance during the training sessions. Quote: “He is in fantastic shape. I have rarely seen him that strong.” Now, given that he said similar things about Marko Marin, we might have to fear, that he decides to send Arne home soon. Friedrich definitely won’t be in the starting line up against Croatia. But being able to play both as right-back and central defender there could be scenarios, in which he could still get his chance to feature and shine.

Lukas Podolski has naturally also taken centre stage in the last couple of days. Miroslav Klose was ready to provoke some internet flame wars by stating that Podolski is better than Ronaldo. A right wing politician in Poland has also been in attention seeking mode and tried to get some publicity by threatening to go to court to strip Podolski of his Polish citizenship. Spiegel Online has the full story.