Fired up for the week of training ahead | OneFootball

There were 24 players on the pitch, including three members of the U21 squad, as the Eagles began their preparations for Saturday evening’s match in Leipzig.

The training pitches at Deutsche Bank Park were a hive of activity on Wednesday morning. Not only was the men’s first team working up a sweat after a day off on Tuesday, the women’s team – albeit with a heavily depleted squad owing to the international break – were put through their paces on the next pitch along.

Both sides face tough challenges this coming weekend. The women host defending champions and current league leaders Bayern Munich at Stadion am Brentanobad on Sunday, while the men are away at second-placed Leipzig on Saturday evening.  

Leipzig booked their place in the DFB Cup quarter-finals on Tuesday evening thanks to a 3-1 win over 1. FC Magdeburg, whereas Eintracht have no midweek fixture to contend with. “We can train more and prepare ourselves well for Saturday. That’s what we’ll do,” Jessic Ngankam told EintrachtTV. 

The attacker, who went out on loan last year and has been injured for much of 2025, made his first competitive Eintracht appearance in 681 days when he took to the field against Wolfsburg last weekend. Three of his teammates are not quite ready for their own comebacks, however, with Jonathan Burkardt, Hugo Larsson and Can Uzun still sidelined.  

Nevertheless, head coach Dino Toppmöller and his staff oversaw a session with 20 outfield players and four goalkeepers on Wednesday, including U21 trio Marvin Dills, Kaan Inanoglu and Amil Siljevic.   In crisp temperatures of around three degrees Celsius, the players stayed warm by keeping on the move, both during the roughly 20-minute athletic programme and once they started with ball work. Different game formats and, above all, shooting exercises made for a competitive environment as preparations for the match in Leipzig got underway.