“I’m definitely not a fan of playing friendlies behind closed doors like this, but in this case our hands were tied. We were told along with Twente by the police in Hengelo about the restriction that we couldn’t send out communications about the game before kick-off,” explains Clemens Fritz, head of first-team football and scouting. After the stadia in Lohne and Lotte were ruled out as venues due to the authorities’ restrictions, Werder tried to find a new public venue. “All stadia which were reachable within reason for both teams were either closed or in use, so this was the only solution for us,” says Fritz.