Peter Stöger has had two training sessions with his new team: the recovery session on Sunday, 24 hours after the 1-2 loss against Werder Bremen, and a final session today before tomorrow's match.

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The groundsmen worked hard to get the training pitch into an extraordinarily good condition on Monday given the adverse weather conditions: it had snowed very heavily once more in the morning. The scope of a final pre-match training session can of course only be limited, and so the new manager was only able to get a few initial impressions as a consequence, before the entire team and support staff set off late in the afternoon for Mainz, where Stöger has his first outing as BVB manager on Tuesday evening (kick-off 20:30 CET).

In any case, he knows the two opponents that Borussia dortmund will face this week in the Bundesliga very well: Mainz and Hoffenheim. "They were results to forget" opined Stöger looking back on Cologne's results on matchday 11 and 12, "but at least I know what these teams' strengths and weaknesses are." (br)