Manuel Baum: "We want to always be ready for anything"

FC Augsburg have been preparing for the upcoming 2018-19 Bundesliga season since 1st July. The first team have already completed a training camp in Mals, South Tirol and head coach Manuel Baum was able to make his first notes of the summer during the friendlies against Austria Lustenau and Würzburger Kickers. After the first session on Monday (16th July), Baum spoke about… …summer preparations on the whole: “We have a total of seven weeks to prepare for the new season. We have a short break in the middle, which will give us three or four days to rest. Firstly, we’re going to focus on the basics as well as fitness and stamina. Then we’ll move on to working on our pressing in attack. We’re going to continue training our transitional play and also work continue working on our build-up play.” …the injuries: “Michael Gregoritsch and Felix Götze are back up on their feet again and I'm assuming that both of them will be in training tomorrow. Marco Richter might take a few weeks before he’s able to come back. Julian Schieber also didn't take part in training today, which is something we’re paying close attention to. Konstantinos Stafylidis still has a few muscle problems after three months out. Georg Teigl and Shawn Parker are also still out injured.” …the line-ups for the upcoming friendlies: “Raphael Framberger has been out for a while and needs to find his feet again against an easier opponent. He will probably play against Olching. We can’t overload any of the players, so we’ll have two teams. …the private training session ahead of the friendly: “I think it’s important that we study our opponents before the game and not just turn up and play. We always want to prepare for an emergency. I think it’s important that we see how the opponents play and then we know how to defend against them. It doesn't matter which league the opponents play in. You could see it in the first half against Würzburg – we couldn't control the game, then came the second half and we knew how to play against them and we controlled the game.”