Mia san Doha! It was dark by the time the Bayern squad disembarked from their Lufthansa plane but it was pleasantly mild. The team had spent roughly five hours on board as they travelled from the wintery conditions of Munich to the spring-like Emirate. At 20:30 local time (18:30 CET), the players boarded their bus to the team hotel, where several players who had travelled separately (Franck Ribéry, Arjen Robben, Manuel Neuer, Mats Hummels, Robert Lewandowski, Arturo Vidal, Douglas Costa, Rafinha and Thiago) were already waiting. It means that preparations can now get underway!

"The conditions here are perfect for us -- the condition of the pitch and the weather," said Philipp Lahm on arrival. The twelve-day break has done the players some good, as Thomas Müller remarked, "We were able to step away from football for a bit and focus more on our personal lives." However, that is now over as head coach Carlo Ancelotti has two training sessions planned per day, with the first on Wednesday morning at 10:30.

The sweat will not just be because of the temperatures (it was 20 degrees Celsius as the team arrived) but because of the work to be done. Lahm commented, "We have to find the right mix between attack and defence again in the second half of the campaign." An important step towards doing that will be "to create more chances and allowed the opposition even less!" Lahm and co. want to show the first results of the training week on 10th January when the Reds host Belgian side KAS Eupen in a friendly match.