Mallorca Diary 25.05.08

A few more days have passed by in Mallorca, the WAGs have left the hotel and the players have finally swapped the basketball court for the football pitch. It’s time for another training camp news roundup.

More details from the extensive and thorough work in the gym were revealed to the press and it’s all about Vorsprung durch Technik. Some of it imported from the US, as Athlete Performance’s Mark Verstegen presented some of his latest gadgets. The other bit was supplied by fitness coach Oliver Schmidtlein and came straight from a mattress store. It’s a high tech mattress complete with remote control, so players can adjust it to maximise their sleeping comfort. After all, the players regenerate the most while sleeping, so an optimised sleeping environment is of utmost importance to a successful Euro campaign.

Life-size prints of photos from the World Cup in 2006 have been placed all around the gym to motivate the players. And team spirit and morale seems to be pretty high already as well. Anecdote has it, that in the evening the team hung around together at the one end of the hotel lobby, while the WAGs had gathered at the other end. So a certain us-vs-them mentality has already formed.

The German weekly magazine Der Spiegel has meanwhile identified Miro Klose as the next Lukas Podolski, in the sense that he finds back to his best form while being with the national team. Based on short interview snippets, he definitely isn’t short of self-confidence and self-belief at the moment. He even has a bet running with his Bayern team mate Luca Toni, about who’s going to score more goals at the Euros.

Still absent is the team’s captain Michael Ballack, who lost the Champions League final with Chelsea on Wednesday. He’ll join the team on Monday. Jogi Löw is confident, that this match won’t have a negative impact on the overall excellent form Ballack is in at the moment. And the chances to lose a penalty shootout with Germany are significantly lower than doing the same in a squad with an English international as captain anyway.

Marko Marin has meanwhile become everybody’s darling. Maybe because the press and his team mates have by now seen his highlight reel on YouTube, or because he impresses during training sessions as well. Jogi Löw has switched from calling him Markus to calling him the little one, and it seems almost certain that the little one has already booked his Euro ticket. By then, even Jens Lehmann should know who he is. The two first met, when the team got tailor-made suits from a sponsor, and when Marin came over to say hello, Lehmann thought he was one of the tailors. He is excused, as they don’t show Germany’s second division in England.
 

 
Next up for the team will be a short trip back to Germany, for a friendly against Belarus. Most players will probably still have tired legs from the intensive fitness sessions, but Jogi’s squad selection and substitutions should still make it an interesting match.