Two special events within a few days: After Jens Stage became a father for the first time during the week, he scored his first Bundesliga goal for SV Werder Bremen on Sunday evening. Also because he “didn’t let himself fall” after a test of patience in the meantime.
Has really picked up speed on the Weser: Jens Stage.
IMAGO/Philippe Ruiz
Marvin Ducksch was the first to greet him when Jens Stage scored the 1-0 goal that set SV Werder Bremen 2-0 away in Stuttgart. And afterwards there was plenty of praise from the attacker and later Bremen’s second goal scorer for the midfielder: “He’s done outstandingly in the last few weeks. He gives us support, wins a lot of duels, runs a lot.” With 11.91 kilometers he was the fastest runner on the pitch: Stage picks up speed.
This is all the more true in comparison to his previous season with the promoted team, which had not gone as well as one might have expected from the only newcomer for whom Werder had invested a fee in the summer – a very handsome one at that: four million euros flowed from Bremen to FC Copenhagen, with whom the 26-year-old won the Danish championship last season. Stage was only one of the starting eleven in the Bundesliga – the league for which he had deliberately left the Champions League participants – between the 7th and 17th match day.
Werner: “Some things just need time”
The step abroad was also a test of patience for the one-time international. At the end of the winter training camp in Spain, Werder coach Ole Werner continued to address any shortcomings and issues with the “clarity in his game and the positioning in the gaps” that the newcomer to the Bremen player was still struggling with.
Stage must have experienced the processes on the pitch “perhaps a little more often before the penny finally drops,” explained the coach. Now he said on Sunday evening in Stuttgart: “I’m happy for him. Some things just need time and nobody can do anything about it.”
Stage, on the other hand, saw his personal role as a joker in the well-functioning Bremen structure as pragmatically (“If the team does a good job, you don’t have to change”) as the achievement of his first goal of the season: “For me, a goal is a goal, the ball just gotta go online.” However, it slipped over his foot when he shot and hit the corner of the Stuttgart goal. Stage: “It was definitely very nice.”
Baumann on Stage: “He appears more self-confident”
“He deservedly rewarded himself with it,” said Ducksch, also referring to Stages’ personal improvement, who for the first time since the 4th matchday was in the starting XI twice in a row – like a week ago in the 2-1 win against Wolfsburg: “You can see that you can’t let yourself go. That everyone is needed with us. Because we don’t have the biggest squad.”
Frank Baumann also likes the Dane’s attitude of not giving up: “What speaks to me about him becoming even more important for us is that he wants to work on himself, steps on the gas and doesn’t whine,” says Werder’s sporting director Stage: “He’s also better at the processes now and appears more self-confident as a result.” And the fresh father feelings are certainly doing their part at the moment…
