A disappointing 2:2 draw against English second division team Sheffield Wednesday recently prompted Marco Friedl, captain of Werder Bremen, to voice harsh criticism. “The bottom line is that I am not satisfied with the training camp. A gift is the wrong word, but it was a case of doing things for the sake of doing things. There is a bit of a negative mood because things are not going well,” he said, among other things, and then publicly called for further reinforcements for the professional squad.
Statements that probably set off alarm bells for every Werder Bremen fan. At least within the club, Friedl seems to be pretty much alone with his opinion. On Monday, football director Clemens Fritz responded to the harsh criticism and tried to put things in a calming way. Now team-mate Romano Schmid has also spoken out – and vehemently contradicted his captain.
“Personally, I find the statement a bit too aggressive, too harsh,” said the attacking midfielder on Tuesday in an interview with Bild clear. He sees no reason to be worried: “It’s early in the season, and early in the preparation. It’s clear that not everything always works out.”
“I don’t really feel that we are uneasy or impatient in the team. Everything is the same as before,” says Schmid, trying to put Friedl’s statements into perspective: “That is sometimes the disappointment when you don’t play so well in a friendly and give up a lead. The boys are just as positive, but also critical of each other as they were last year.”
The truth is that Schmid was allowed to take special leave after participating in the European Championships with Austria and only joined the team four days before the team left the training camp (27 July). The 24-year-old was therefore not able to take part in large parts of the preparations up to that point.
“I haven’t seen everything, but the fact is that we have to look at the positive things and at what we can do and what we have shown,” he says, adding: “We have to continue to develop and not let a few test matches or preparation completely distract us.”
Read more Werder news: