Bundesliga clubs head overseas for winter training camps

The defending champions have travelled to Qatar, where local interest in all things football is building ahead of hosting the 2022 World Cup. The star-studded Bundesliga leaders have attracted curious onlookers during its training camp in the desert state.

Wolfsburg, in 2nd, have been preparing for their meeting with Bayern by holding training camps in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth. The players put their personal grief for to one side on January 14 as they beat Ajax Cape town 4-1 in their first match since the tragic death of Junior Malanda on January 10. Pictured are Aaron Hunt (l) and Bas Dost.

The 'Sunshine State' has been anything but at times during Leverkusen's winter camp in Orlando. Bad weather has had the players thinking on their feet - and training indoors. Here, midfielder Stefan Reinartz does his workout in the lobby of the team hotel, testing his own strength against that of the banqueting suite door handles. Cologne, their arch-rivals, also join them in the States.

It seems Bayern will not win everything this season: they were beaten to Qatar by Schalke, who had first use of the lush playing facilities on offer in the middle of the desert. The air-conditioned stadia were not needed at this time of year, but they will be if FIFA stays with its plans for a summer World Cup in Qatar in 2022. For the Royal Blues, the heat is on for a Champions League charge.

While Hoffenheim are in Johannesburg, seventh-placed Frankfurt are one of a host of international teams booked to train in the UAE's largest Emirate. Thomas Schaaf’s men are staying at the luxurious Emirates Palace, which even has its own FIFA-standard pitch for training. They'll play Hamburg, among others, this month.

Mid-table Mainz travelled to Marbella in Spain to forget the pain of taking only four points from its final eight Bundesliga matches in 2014. Shinji Okazaki and South Korean pair Joo-Ho Park and Ja-Cheol Koo are all away at the Asian Cup but if any of the other Mainz players get that sinking feeling again, they might do well to avoid the four swimming pools at the team hotel.

There can be little doubt about Josef Zinnbauer's focus for his Hamburg side's winter training camp in Dubai: scoring goals. The only ever-present club in Germany's top flight registered only nine successful strikes in the first half of the season and will be surely concentrating its efforts on the final third of the state-of-the-art pitch at the Nad Al Sheba Sports Complex.

A five-star hotel resort three times the size of Monaco; Dortmund can lose themselves and forget their Bundesliga woes on their winter training trip to La Manga in southern Spain. Stuttgart, another relegation rival with new management, is just across the border in Lagos, Portugal.

German football's yo-yo club has headed to Sotogrande in Spain for some mid-winter respite from its mid-winter woes. A desperate first half of the Bundesliga season saw Christian Streich's side win only two of 17 matches as it slid to the bottom of the table. For Freiburg it seems the only way is up - unless, of course, it goes down.

The small resort town on the southern Turkish coast has been hosting no fewer than six German clubs for their winter training camps: Augsburg, Bremen, Gladbach, Hannover, Hertha and Paderborn. The Bremen players were leading the synchronized stretching competition and were the first to leave, packing their bags for home on January 14. Hertha will be the last to leave, ten days later.