Niko Kovac: “Now it's all about freshness” | OneFootball

…on the dress rehearsal against Juventus:We didn't have the freshness that we need to have. But that was to be expected after two weeks of pre-season. We were at the training camp and did quite a bit there, but I don't want to use that as an excuse. We made a few minor mistakes. I also saw some good things, but the details were missing. That's why we lost the game. We still have some work to do because we're not where we need to be yet.

…on the training week up until the cup tie in Essen: Now it's all about freshness. We'll have a run-out tomorrow and then give the boys two days off. And then it's time to get down to business. Hafenstraße, Monday evening game, under the floodlights. The atmosphere will be good, we will need to fight. We need to get through to the next round.

…on the aims for the coming season:We would like to get back into the Champions League. We need to be hard-working and humble so we're definitely not going to be making any bold statements. We want to play intense and aggressive football. We want to score lots of goals and so we need to put our opponents under pressure. I hope we can manage to do that.

…on the substitution of Niklas Süle:

He felt his calf. We will do an MRI scan tomorrow and hope that nothing too serious has happened.