A first competitive start, a goal and a man of the match performance

Robin Hack earned the man of match award for a very impressive performance in his first competitive start for the Foals, getting a goal and assist for Borussia in the cup tie against Heidenheim.

It has taken some time for Robin Hack to work his way into the starting XI for a Borussia game. Following his move from Arminia Bielefeld to Mönchengladbach in the summer, the 25-year-old had played in eight of Borussia’s previous ten competitive games, but his appearances had all come as a substitute. “We’ve always said to Robin that he could work his way into the starting line-up through good performances from the bench and he has been playing well as of late, so he had definitely earned his place in the eleven,” said Roland Virkus, Borussia’s managing director for sport.

And almost immediately, Hack had a positive impact, assisting Jordan with an accurate corner delivery to put the Foals 1-0 up in the third minute. While the fair-haired man was not directly involved in Jordan’s second goal just five minutes later, Hack caused lots of problems for Heidenheim down the wing for the whole of the first half, as did Nathan Ngoumou on the other flank. “The fact that we converted our first two chances and started the cup tie in the best possible way naturally made things a lot easier for us,” said Hack, who was very pleased with the performance of the whole team: “We defended really well and were clinical in attack.”

Hack also played his part in that, as he headed home from Luca Netz’s corner to all but put the game to bed shortly before half-time. “I couldn’t really believe it because I’ve wasted a lot of my headers in recent weeks. Yesterday’s chance was probably the hardest of them all, which is why I was surprised when it went in. It goes without saying, though, that I was extremely happy with the goal,” said Hack.

After racing into a 3-0 lead in the first 45, the Foals focused on controlling the flow of the game in the second half, which is why Hack was less involved than he had been up to that point. Nevertheless, he was named “Man of the Match” by the DFB after the final whistle. The attacker was full of praise for his teammates: “We tried to up our game across the board after our league match against Heidenheim and I think we did that pretty well,” explained Hack. He added, “We had a lot of possession and didn’t give them many chances at all. It was definitely a step in the right direction. We need to take this momentum into the game against Freiburg.”