A trio of Borussia Dortmund midfielders returned to action in a test match on Tuesday as Nuri Sahin, Jakub Blazczykowski and Marco Reus all played in the 2-1 win over minor league club TSV Havelse, local paper Ruhr Nachrichten reported.
The former pair had been sidelined with knee injuries for all of this season, and in the case of the Poland international Blazczyzkowksi, for all but three minutes of 2014. Germany international Reus had pulled out of the recent run of international games with ankle problems, after having been sidelined twice this year with major ankle injuries.
Blazczykowski played for 25 minutes, while Marco Reus featured for one half and is set to return to the Dortmund squad for their match at SC Paderborn at the weekend.
The sought-after Germany international has yet to decide about his future. Media reports in Germany as well as in the UK and Spain have linked Reus, who has a 25 million-euro release clause in his contract which could be triggered next summer, to almost every top club in Europe.
Reus has been linked with Real Madrid, Chelsea, Barcelona, Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool among other clubs. In Germany, Bayern Munich believe they have a strong argument to convince the forward of taking the path his former teammates Mario Gotze and Robert Lewandowski have already taken.
"I think that it's in any case very, very good for Germany when good players stay in the Bundesliga," Bayern midfielder Xabi Alonso told Sport Bild. "And it does not matter if that's at Dortmund, Schalke, Wolfsburg or Bayern. Top players in the league increase the quality in the weekly competition."
Elsewhere, numerous media outlets have reported in recent days that Dortmund are currently monitoring the transfer market to find a successor for 34-year-old keeper Roman Weidenfeller, who is under contract until 2016.
Papers have linked Dortmund to most of the up-and-coming Bundesliga keepers, like Cologne's Timo Horn or Freiburg's Swiss keeper Roman Burki. On Tuesday, Eurosport mentioned that Dortmund are interested in signing Ron-Robert Zieler, who is under contract at Hannover until 2017.
And on Wednesday, Sport Bild also claimed that the 25-year-old Zieler is a candidate for the job between the Dortmund posts. The paper claimed that he has a five million-euro release clause in his contract -- three million less than previously reported.