So now nest boxes.
Max Kruse is no longer allowed to play Bundesliga football at VfL Wolfsburg, but the club's best-known player has been back at least marginally in almost everything else since Tuesday.
During training in the morning, he was sometimes sent to goalkeeper practice.
In the early afternoon he then supported a special social commitment by VfL.
Once a year, the players work on selected projects in the region.
Some shared the food in the Wolfsburg hospital, others beautified the outdoor area of a day care center.
Kruse, together with national striker Alexandra Popp and Croatian newcomer Bartol Franjic, belonged to the group that built a fence and nesting boxes for birds in an animal health practice in the small town of Bokelberge in the Gifhorn district.
VfL and the former national player have been in a kind of limbo since coach Niko Kovac and the sporting director informed him the day before the 1-0 win at Eintracht Frankfurt that he would no longer play a game for the club.
He is not allowed to change within Germany or to another top league until the winter.
Kruse does not want to go to Greece or Saudi Arabia.
And negotiations about triggering his contract, which is valid up to and including summer 2023, cannot be concluded in a few minutes either, because it is about a million-dollar settlement.
Retribution from Kovac
So the 34-year-old is still formally part of the team and therefore has the right to take part in this team's training sessions.
Training manager Kovac quickly made it clear on Tuesday that he was only a marginal figure there.
Kruse was allowed to complete the warm-up exercises and the final program with everyone else.
Game forms and tactical content, on the other hand, are not.
During this time he was the only outfield player to help with goalkeeper training - and that in front of numerous media representatives who had come mainly because of him.
Kruse shooting the reserve goalkeeper warmly: Whether consciously or unconsciously, this imagery is also a small tit-for-tat from Kovac.
Because one of the main accusations of the club against Kruse is that he otherwise constantly stages himself in the social networks.
When he and his wife started a video show on YouTube or openly chatted about working only four hours a day for his million-dollar salary, to the annoyance of VfL and main sponsor Volkswagen, he also ignored the tense situation at his club and its parent company .
The former Wolfsburg coach Felix Magath therefore considers Kruse's ousting to be correct.
"A player can be as good as he wants: If he doesn't want to fit in, then he can't play for the club," said the 69-year-old in an interview with ran.de.
“I think Niko Kovac will have offered every player to work with him and be successful with him.
If there are players in the squad who have their own ideas and believe they are so good that they only have to do what they think is right, the coach has a problem." Kovac "did everything right" and the Wolfsburg team had to "in such a case strengthen the coach".