Bayern are well supplied for defensive midfielders, are they not? Ah, but Bastian Schweinsteiger is still recovering from foot surgery, Javi Martinez and Luiz Gustavo are not back from vacation, and Anatoliy Tymoshchuk has returned to Zenit St Petersburg after four years in Munich, so it means the Trentino training camp is the perfect stage for up-and-coming contenders to make their mark.
Chief among them is Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, the 17-year-old who made his Bundesliga debut for FCB towards the end of last season. “And he's now a fixture in the senior squad," Matthias Sammer confirmed when he spoke to fcbayern.de. The board director for sport described the young Dane as “an exceptional talent," who is already “very, very stable" both physically and mentally.
Hojbjerg underlined his ability on Wednesday evening in the first serious warm-up match of the current pre-season phase, a 3-0 success against Italian second division outfit Brescia Calcio. In the 4–1–4–1 formation currently being tried out by new boss Pep Guardiola, Hojbjerg started as the solitary holding midfielder and showed off his huge potential on many occasions.
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