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ST PAULI kept themselves warm during the winter break with three friendly games, before aiming to get back on track in the league against Dynamo Dresden next Thursday.
Having gone into the month-long Winterpause on the back of their first league victory in nine games — a 2-1 triumph at home to VfL Bochum — the club looked to keep their spirits high and their bodies warm. A training camp and two games in southern Spain, and a third game back home in Hamburg at the Millerntor, should be ideal preparation for the team under new boss Markus Kauczinski.
The club’s long-term aim is return to the Bundesliga and they tested themselves against top-flight opposition in the first of these friendlies in Marbella.
They fell to a 3-1 defeat against a VfL Wolfsburg side who are lodged in the middle of the Bundesliga table. They then recovered with a 1-0 win against Chinese side Tianjin Quanjian in Coin on the outskirts of sunny Malaga.
The return to Germany saw them draw 1-1 with Bochum on home turf and Kauczinski is now looking forward to resuming the league campaign.
“We’ve taken a big step forward at training camp and are closer to how we want to play football,” said the 47-year-old head coach.
“We’ve worked on footballing things and keeping compact. We’ll add the final touches back home and ensure the players are nice and sprightly.
“We have to get into a position where a first-team emerges that can gel. It’ll be tight in three or four places, perhaps clearer in others.”
The game against Dynamo Dresden presents the ideal challenge to kick off the second-half of the season. The east German club are 11th in the table, just a point behind St Pauli, and a win for either side could propel them into the top-half and edge them closer to the promotion play-off spots.
“They put a lot of emphasis on possession and have the composure to put moves together,” Kauczinski said of his side’s upcoming opponents. “It’ll be interesting and exciting. A meeting of different teams with different ideas.”
The ideas of St Pauli’s new coach will become evident in the second half of the season, and the winter break was the ideal time to drill his team in these new ways. The club will be hoping they help them recover from a poor run of results at the end of 2017, and go into the new year with renewed hopes of promotion.