The Fans Football Blog3

Asked about his situation, Bayer Leverkusen central defender and Barcelona loan out Henrique (21) has said in an interview with Catalan sports paper Sport that he's satisfied about his first months in Germany:

"I'm very happy here. In those few weeks I've adapted very good, I've learned new things and I can confirm that I'm making a lot of progress. The whole process of adapting to European football is being very important for me because it allows me to grow as a player and as a person. It's an experience that for sure will have a very positive effect on my later career.

I'm very motivated and the coach believes in me, which makes me want to give something back by working hard and being dedicated. Normally I play as central defender but last week several players weren't available so I played for this one time as right back defender, a position I've already played before when I was still with Brazilian second division club Coritiba.

The defense is playing very compact, on one line and always taking care a lot of the positioning. That's something new to me and I'm still adapting to what the coach asks from me. This also means I can rarely advance to the midfield to help distributing the game, which has always been one of my strong points.

German football is physically very demanding. There's a lot of contact during the games and you have to be strong and in shape, that's why we work very hard between the matches. We're doing a lot of work-out to gain more muscles and I'm sure this will help me in becoming a more complete player. This evolution will be really positive for me.

I'm following every day what happens in Barcelona, mainly through the club's official televsion channel Barça TV. I always put it on so I can see how the team is doing. I have regularly contact with Barcelona officials. Especially during my first week here, they called me several times to ask me how I was doing."