“A thrilling game of football” | OneFootball

Head coach Dino Toppmöller, captain Kevin Trapp and defender Robin Koch reflect on the 3-2 win away to Stuttgart.

Head coach Dino Toppmöller: “It was a thrilling, very good game of football. We were lucky not to fall behind. Kevin helped us – particularly with the penalty save. We then made it 1-0 and after the break we had a really good spell, scored two more goals and had a golden opportunity to make it 4-0 through Nene [Brown]. That would have been too good to be true. We could tell what was coming in the closing stages, with VfB’s quality and with their fans behind them. We had to suffer. We’ll take the win – we had that little bit of luck on our side. We also have momentum on our side at the moment, which we’ve earned.”

Kevin Trapp: “That was obviously very emotional. Being 3-0 up and not winning would have been very hard to take. There are obviously reasons why we nearly conceded the equaliser at the end. We can’t stop playing football at 3-0 up. That really needs addressing. With the penalty, I guessed the right way and luckily it all turned out well.”

Robin Koch: “It was a crazy game with a crazy ending – which thankfully went in our favour in the end. To win like that was really emotional. When they scored the third, I initially thought, “this can’t be true”. If you’re 3-0 up, you obviously don’t want to let the game slip from your grasp. We were all the more relieved to see it disallowed. We actually played well, and it was unnecessarily tight at the end. Stuttgart did very well.”