Regeneration was the main item on the agenda the day after the extremely unlucky 1-0 friendly loss at the hands of Espanyol. The first step was for the players to get the tiredness out of their legs from Friday's match and the intense training session earlier that day by taking a half-hour bike ride along the Rhine.

They then went into the gym before briefly appearing on the "Ri Au" pitch. There was a great applause from the many fans once again in attendance for Julian Weigl, who was completing his running exercises alongside fitness coach Florian Wangler.

At the same time the coaching staff studied the 90 minutes from the previous night's defeat to the eighth-best team in Spain on their laptops. "It's not important that you win in a friendly match," declared coach Peter Bosz after the final whistle.

He would certainly have expected that all nine of the outfield players who played the full 90 minutes – the agile and creative Mario Götze, whose return from injury is still being carefully managed, was replaced by debutant Mo Dahoud at the half-time interval – would experience a drop in energy levels in the second period following their dominant and fluid performance in the opening 45 minutes in Winterthur. But that didn't stop them from battling deep into stoppage time in an attempt to avoid defeat. (br)