The diary from Antalya provides daily insights into the training camp. What was said, how they trained, who excelled. You won't miss a thing here.

In the gym in the morning, on the pitch in the afternoon

After taking it easy yesterday, the Violets started the day more intensively again today. In two groups and under the guidance of athletics coaches Christian Balga and Daniel Gangl, Mirko Kos & Co worked on their fitness. The 27-year-old keeper, in particular, is no match for anyone in the gym - you can see some impressive pictures in the gallery below.

The second training session took place on the fantastic training pitches of the Titanic Mardan Palace. With a lot of tactics and large game forms, in which coach Stephan Helm repeatedly intervened to deal with individual situations in detail. In the final shooting exercise, which was completed in teams of four players, Konstantin Aleksa, Andreas Gruber, Manfred Fischer and Matteo Pérez Vinlöf were the most accurate.

Analysis of the first test match

Between the training sessions, immediately before lunch, the Violets analyzed the 2:1 test match victory against NŠ Mura. A video analysis of around 20 minutes takes several hours of work - done by Philipp Steiner and Daniel Gasser. It starts immediately after the final whistle of a match: "The game is then edited and made available to everyone in the coaching team", the two explain.

Stephan Helm then sets the direction for the analysis, but the main aim is to show situations in which the build-up play or pressing worked well, for example. "We show these scenes as positive reinforcements so that our principles work even better and we continue to improve as a team." Steiner and Gasser pre-select up to 40 situations, which are then viewed together and reduced to around 15 match scenes.

"Then the video analysis is prepared for the players and finalized after another round of feedback with Stephan, where he may want to discuss one scene in more detail and not include another at all." The presentation is then done by the head coach himself, in which he goes through and discusses scene by scene with his team.

Steiner is more responsible for our own analysis, while Gasser is more concerned with analyzing the upcoming opponents. "But of course we work closely together, support each other and take on each other's tasks, that's absolutely clear."

Team building with Ralph Krueger

In the evening, the team gathered in one of the hotel's many conference rooms to once again work on mental training with Ralph Krueger. As in the past two years, the successful coach and current chairman of the supervisory board spoke about the “winning culture”. He asked the players, the coaching team and the managers present various questions and had the six groups rate themselves as a team in several categories.

The groups were also asked to make suggestions for improvement. Not only experienced players such as Aleksandar Dragovic and Manfred Fischer took the floor, but young players such as Konstantin Aleksa and Matteo Pérez Vinlöf also had their say. It was a successful workshop that was very well received and allowed the Violets to grow closer together.