Werder Bremen lean heavily on Niclas Füllkrug after turbulent international break

Werder Bremen lean heavily on Niclas Füllkrug after turbulent international break An international break that began with Werder Bremen sitting on seven points after four Bundesliga fixtures has not been kind to Germany’s green Hanseatic city-state club. Daniel Thioune’s side entered the break with genuine momentum. Seven points and eight goals offered evidence that Thioune had begun adding more expansive ideas to the compact football initially required during last season’s relegation battle. Werder were making effective tactical adjustments, had already scored four times from dead-ball situations and, most importantly, had repeatedly demonstrated the resilience required to overturn deficits. Niclas Füllkrug stood near the center of the revival. Any assumption that the 33-year-old would simply resume where he left off at his former club had been tempered by two difficult years away from Bremen. One month into his return, however, Kicker could already write that Füllkrug was performing and leading “as if he had never been away.” Much has happened since. Werder Bremen’s international break takes an ugly turn The problems actually began before Werder’s disastrous 0-7 friendly defeat at FC Twente. Highly-rated young striker Salim Musah suffered a serious thigh injury while away with the Germany U20s. The 1.98-meter attacker, who had featured four times from the bench this season, will not return until the new year. One day later, Werder mutually terminated Dawid Kownacki’s contract. The 29-year-old had not played a single professional minute this season and no longer possessed a meaningful sporting perspective at the club. That departure was expected to some degree. The next one was not. Markus Pilawa, appointed only in May as Werder’s head of squad planning and transfer strategy , also left the club at the end of September. Personal circumstances in his family environment were explicitly cited as the reason and his departure should not be conflated with Werder’s sporting situation. It nevertheless added another change to an already turbulent period. Then came Enschede. Werder lost 0-7 to Twente in a behind-closed-doors friendly that almost immediately obliterated the good feeling generated by their Bundesliga start. Thioune’s team trailed 0-4 after just 21 minutes and 0-6 at halftime. Werder failed to register a single first-half shot. Füllkrug’s voice – according to Kicker – carried clearly through the empty stadium. “Das ist alles ein Wahnsinn hier!” the striker shouted with Werder already four goals down. The rough translation — “This is complete madness here!” — rather neatly summarized the afternoon. Thioune was considerably less restrained afterwards. “I had to compose myself briefly before I dismantled the entire dressing room,” the Werder trainer said. “I have absolutely no understanding and no acceptance for that performance. I cannot accept something like that, especially in terms of the attitude. That was nothing today, in every area.” Werder’s scheduled free Saturday was subsequently cancelled. Thioune called the result a “warning” that his team could not afford to operate without “100 percent resilience, readiness and quality.” Sporting director Clemens Fritz reached much the same conclusion, stressing that Werder cannot compete when they give even “one or two percent less.” Injury problems pile up before Dortmund The friendly brought another problem. Felix Agu, making his first appearance since the summer preseason following a lengthy injury layoff, lasted only around 40 minutes before suffering fresh calf trouble. The full extent of Werder’s personnel problems became clearer at Thursday’s pre-match press conference. Agu, Skelly Alvero, Senne Lynen, Jens Stage, Justin Njinmah, Musah, Keke Topp and Moussa Ndiaye will all miss Friday evening’s trip to Borussia Dortmund. Eight senior players are therefore unavailable. Cedric Itten at least returned from international duty with Switzerland, but even that comes with an asterisk. The striker had taken a blow to his foot and arrived back in Bremen only on Wednesday afternoon after a short night. Musah’s long-term absence, Kownacki’s departure and Itten’s less-than-ideal preparation naturally sharpen the focus on Füllkrug. So too does the absence of established figures such as Stage and Lynen. Füllkrug is no longer merely Werder’s first-choice center-forward. He has rapidly become one of the players expected to hold the entire structure together. That responsibility now becomes particularly relevant at Signal Iduna Park. Füllkrug returns to Dortmund with plenty on his shoulders Füllkrug knows the ground better than most of his teammates. His sole Dortmund campaign in 2023/24 was a mixed one individually. He registered 12 Bundesliga goals after arriving from Bremen as the previous season’s joint Bundesliga leading goalscorer, but never became the dominant attacking figure Dortmund ultimately sought. Füllkrug himself cited Dortmund’s decision to acquire Serhou Guirassy from Stuttgart in the summer of 2024 as one reason he opted to move to West Ham. The decision to join the London outfit proved disastrous. West Ham paid a reported €27m for the striker, but Füllkrug managed only three Premier League goals during an injury-plagued spell in England. His international career also stalled. He hasn’t scored for Germany since 2024 and hasn’t been capped since 2025. The decline is reflected in his valuation as well. Once transferred for €27m, Füllkrug now carries an estimated market value of just €3.5m. Füllkrug’s spells away from Germany did little to enhance his reputation. His return to Bremen already has. The striker enters Friday’s match having scored in three consecutive Bundesliga games. Thioune noted during his press conference that Füllkrug has apparently never managed to score in four successive matches. That allowed the Werder coach a rare opportunity to smile amid an otherwise difficult week. “Of course he’ll be motivated,” Thioune said Thursday. “He’ll also be happy to return to Dortmund. I think it was a good time for him in Dortmund. Apart from that, he can also demonstrate his quality; something that I think has been talked down these past two years.” “That can translate to a huge opportunity for him tomorrow,” Thioune said with a distinctly half serious smirk. “He can kill two birds with one stone, score against Dortmund and make it four games in a row with a goal. We would all be happy about that and he definitely deserves it.” The joke masks a fairly serious reality. Werder need goals from him. After the international break they have just endured, they may need considerably more than that. GGFN  |  Peter Weis