“Grateful for the fan support” | OneFootball

Markus Krösche, Dennis Schmitt and Mario Götze spoke after the Tottenham Hotspur match.

Board member for sport Markus Krösche: “We need to be more targeted in the way we attack in certain situations. And on top of that, we need to be more solid – the one-on-ones in the Champions League are different, more intense than you get in the Bundesliga. In the Champions League, little mistakes immediately lead to chances and the bigger mistakes often lead to goals, so we need to develop a different consistency at the back – we need to learn. We’ve got a young team, and as such, we have room to grow. We’ll learn from this, you always learn the most from negative results. The lads will come out of this stronger – the Champions League has been a good experience for us. We’re disappointed though. We thought the Champions League would go different than this.” 

Interim coach Dennis Schmitt: “We’re disappointed by the result, but Tottenham earned their win. We showed a little bit of progress in the way we defended solidly as a unit and remained compact. Overall, we didn’t have the penetration. For the first goal, everyone had a role but we lost sight of the back post, and that’s something that we can defend better. We’re very, very grateful for the fan support – they spurred us on and that gives us a good feeling going into the next match. We’ve got a lot of work to do and we’ll be putting a lot into making sure that we come out on top at home to Leverkusen.”

Mario Götze: “When you look over the eight games as a whole, the Champions League season has been a disappointment for us. Once we saw the draw, we obviously knew that it was going to be tough. After coming up short in recent weeks, we gave it our all for the final match and despite everything, I think we’ve still made a little bit of progress and won the fans back over in part. After what happened on Saturday, the fans’ reaction was so important for us, but what’s even more important is that we pull together, stick together as a team in what we say and what we do, look forward, not back, and turn all out attentions now to the Bundesliga.”