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Julian Green, healthy again, says he can learn while on loan at Hamburg

Julian Green remains confident he'll be able to make the most of his stint with Bundesliga side Hamburg while on loan from Bayern Munich.

In the first half of the season, Green made just five appearances totaling 111 minutes for his new club. This was far short of what was expected given that Green excelled for Bayern's reserve side in 2013-14, and then scored a memorable goal for the U.S. against Belgium at last summer's World Cup.

On the rare occasions Green has seen the field, he has struggled to replicate that form for either club or country.

"The time in Brazil and the start in Hamburg, they are like two different worlds for me," Green told ESPN FC via telephone. "But that's football. Both experiences are very important for me. I just can learn from this experience. I'm still the same Julian Green I was five months ago."

The fact that Hamburg fired manager Mirko Slomka just three games into the season didn't help, and the team has continued to struggle under replacement Josef Zinnbauer. Hamburg currently lies in 14th place, but is just two points ahead of bottom club Freiburg. A relegation battle isn't an ideal situation in which to hand a 19-year-old minutes.

"It's different for Green," acknowledged U.S. assistant Andi Herzog. "With Hamburg it's a different style of play, and his teammates don't have the same quality like with Bayern. So he has to rethink the situation and work even harder."

Injury and illness have also served to limit Green's playing time. He suffered a rib injury shortly after Zinnbauer took over, and it proved difficult to shake.

"I trained with the team but I wasn't 100 percent because the pain was still there," Green said. "I didn't have my rhythm because one day it was better and then another day it was much worse. It was a hard time."

Green insisted that injuries are not the root cause of his lack of playing time, though he declined to elaborate as to why. Instead, he preferred to focus on the present, including a just-concluded training camp in Dubai, which he hopes will provide a platform for increased playing time.

"I know I'm feeling perfect, and I have no injuries," he said. "We worked very hard in Dubai, and I trained hard every day.

"I know that this way can be hard sometimes but I have to assert myself at the highest level of football. That's all I can do. I believe in myself and that's the situation."

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