Fritz praises Undav’s late-career rise: “He fought his way through all the detours.”

At their own Thursday press conference, SV Werder Bremen trainer Ole Werner and Bremen licensing director Clemens Fritz have reacted to the news that their team will be facing the seemingly unstoppable duo of Serhou Guirassy and Deniz Undav from the start this coming Saturday evening. 

The news that Serhou Guirassy and Deniz Undav will be featuring together in the VfB Stuttgart starting XI for the first time quickly found its way north to Germany’s Hanseatic city-state on Thursday. Journalists attending SV Werder Bremen’s press-conference quickly asked SV trainer Ole Werner whether or not he had a solution for the dynamic attacking tandem. Werner, unsurprisingly, confessed that he had none.

“As their goal-scoring record shows this year, that’s a question many teams have asked themselves this year,” Werner said, “and it’s not easy to find an answer. There’s no panacea for that. It will only work as a team.”

As is often the case at Werder pressers, SV licensing director Clemens Fritz was also in attendance. Members of the assembled media corps took the opportunity to ask Fritz about Undav’s rise. The 27-year-old is, after all, a native of nearby Achim. Undav spent five years at the Bremen academy between 2007 and 2012.

“There have always been and will always be stories about ‘late bloomers’,” Fritz said, “One can’t really judge what happened back then. He [Undav] took a unconventional path. I have to accord him respect for that.”

“It’s hard when one receives the news that one is being released [as Undav once was by Bremen],” Fritz continued, “but he fought his way through the detours and never lost faith in his own performance.”

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