Van der Vaart happy to be ´home´

Rafael van der Vaart trained with Hamburg on Sunday after completing a three-year deal to return to the club he left four seasons ago.

Hamburg welcomed the homecoming of the Dutch midfielder, who spent two seasons at Tottenham following his move to London from Real Madrid, after narrowly avoiding relegation last season.

“It’s great to be back. The fans love me and it’s always good that the fans expect a lot,” Van der Vaart said.

“I am happy to be back but for the whole town, the whole club we need to start winning again and I’m happy that I’ll be able to help with that.

Expectations and pressure on van der Vaart will be high and he says that the team needs to perform collectively in order to bounce back from their opening two defeats.

“I hope so, the only thing that I can promise is that I will give everything,” he said.

“And as I said before, I can’t do it on my own and I don’t want to do it on my own. I think that the team wants to help as well. These are good guys, it’s a good team.

“I’ve already had that situation with Hamburg when we were bottom of the league and it becomes a mental thing where it’s really difficult to win games, but we have to get out of this.”

Hamburg makes the trip to Bundesliga leaders Eintracht Frankfurt after the international break.