Uwe Rosler: Life behind closed doors

In our exclusive Q&A, former City crowd favourite Rosler has revealed how the Bundesliga is dealing with the return of football.

The German league was one of the first to return to training and the first of the major European leagues to resume playing matches in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rosler, who made 176 appearances for City and scored 64 goals between 1994-1998, has coached for the past 16 years at clubs including Brentford, Leeds United, Fleetwood Town, Malmo and is now in charge of Bundesliga side Fortuna Dusseldorf – his first management role in his home country

But with City resuming training over the past week and the Premier League making tentative plans to resume the 2019/20 season, what will be the new normal in football?

Speaking ahead of Dusseldorf’s crucial game against Schalke this evening, Uwe took time out to reveal how things have been for him and his players since sporting restrictions were eased.

Uwe, English football is a little behind the Bundesliga in terms of recommencing – how’s it been so far for you?

“So far, it’s been a big challenge. It was a big challenge at the beginning of March when all the games were cancelled and we had to go into a mandatory break, but we did it differently. We trained throughout, didn’t take any breaks or free time so we had three weeks training at home and then began again in small groups. For five weeks, we didn’t know when we would start playing games again and then from week five to week seven there was more and more certainty that we would be starting again soon.

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“Of course, then there is the challenge of how to motivate the players and to ensure the fitness levels were where we wanted them to be because although we had continued training, it was just basic fitness so we had to work on that. Then we had seven to nine days’ notice that games would resume with protocols in place from the Bundesliga and also the local health authority.