Germany's Hamburg football team decided on a fairly unusual place to train this week when they opted for a sessions on a special pitch built at 3,250m on the side of a cliff by the Tux summer ski slopes in Austria's Ziller Valley this week.

The specially created football pitch is one of the highest in the world, certainly Europe, and gave the leading German club a unique training venue, with spectacular scenery all around, although a rather long way down to go and get the ball if it fell over the edge.

Mladen Petric, Marcel Jansen, Jeffrey Bruma, Heung Min Son and the other members of the team took the opportunity to have a short high altitude training session and found out how a football reacts on top of the Alps.
Trainer Michael Oenning and the players rated the training conditions as, "quite heavy going in this thin air" but said the view at least was inspiring.

"The team will find out next season if the high altitude training on the Hintertux Glacier will bring the Hamburgers from the top of the mountain to the top of the German Bundes League." said a spokesperson from the year-round ski centre.