It's happened - the Red Devils have started their preparation for the forthcoming European Championship (which takes place from June 10th to July 10th in France). On Thursday, ten players were training at the KFC Heist home ground. Marc Wilmots stated that he has no intention of replacing Björn Engels, who has now been excluded from the competition through injury.
The ten players present participated in a one and a half-hour session. Dedryck Boyata, who is recovering from a thigh injury, took part in a five-aside confrontation. “We will see how his recovery pans out,” Marc Wilmots stated after the training session.
Fundamentally, eleven players should have been present this Thursday but Radja Nainggolan stayed at the hotel. “He got a calf injury a few days back. We did not want to take risks at this point and Radja underwent an ultrasound scan. Fortunately, it turned out to be nothing serious, just straightforward bruising. He may resume training tomorrow [in fact today - Friday],” continued the team selector.
Wilmots is not at all worried about only having half of his team fit to play at the moment. “We knew that this would be the case. The first days of training are deliberately set aside for recovery and treatment. Tomorrow, we will train for two hours with the emphasis being upon injury prevention and muscle exercises. Our objective is to prepare the players, both physically and mentally in the best possible way. Those who have played less during the season will have a specialized training programme. Divock Origi and Christian Benteke arrived this Thursday to start training as quickly as possible.”
The second training session will take place on Friday morning at 11.00 a.m. On Sunday, the Devils will head over to Switzerland for a one-week training regime.
(Source: Belga)
