Reaction to win over Saarbrücken

Debutant Tomáš Čvančara, Florian Neuhaus and head coach Gerardo Seoane spoke to the media following Gladbach’s 2-1 win over Saarbrücken.

Here are the most important bits:

Tomáš Čvančara: It was a good game in which we also got to see what we need to improve upon. I was in a good position before the foul and if he hadn’t have brought me down then I would’ve been through on goal. I didn’t want to be fouled, but it happened, so I had to get the goal after that. I wanted to get off to a good start and that was a great start for me. I hope that more goals and good performances will follow. The pre-season is tough but we have to work hard in order to be ready for the first game in a couple of weeks.

Florian Neuhaus: That was a successful game before we start our week at the training camp. We implemented what the coach wanted from us, especially in the first half. But we also played well in the second half after the many substitutions. Even though Saarbrücken got back into the game with their late goal, we deserved the 2-1 win. We wanted to show several facets to our game. Our pressing was good, especially at the start of the match, which is when we got the two goals. When we sit deeper and the opponent has more of the ball, it comes down to defending the box well. That maybe doesn’t look as pretty, but we continued to control the game and that’s what we set out to do.

Gerardo Seoane: You could see that we’d been working on our tactics in the second week of training, which we’ve just started doing. We set ourselves some targets for the friendly and we were also able to observe a few things. In the opening stages we we pressed well, won the ball in some good areas and also countered as more of a unit. We still, of course, have lots of work to do. The players have done lots of training in the past couple of weeks so we have built a good foundation. Now the focus is more on the tactical side of things. We saw that Tomáš Čvančara gives us an option with his size and his physicality, which was somewhat lacking before. He is difficult for opponents to come up against both in attack and in defence. He also showed on two or three occasions that he has good pace.