Baumgartner: “It’s a case of leaving our hearts out on the pitch”

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8 April 2023, 15:18 yayınlandı

Christoph Baumgartner: “It’s understandable that the fans are mad. They try to give it their all week after week, they’re there at the games and they support us. We’re sorry, we try to convey to them that we keep giving everything. That’s what they ask of us, for everyone to give everything. Everyone knows where we are. This is the relegation battle. It’s first and foremost a case of leaving our hearts out on the pitch, contesting the challenges. That has to be a basic requirement; otherwise, we will come off second best. We haven’t scored a goal for three games now; that’s not enough, no question. That’s a challenge for all us attacking players. We can’t concede a set-piece goal for the third game in a row. If we let in a goal like that three times, something is not right. We have to be aware that these situations decide the outcome of games and we have to defend them better. Anyone who has ever played football will understand that our natural flow is missing a bit. But none of that gets us anywhere; we have to force things. At the moment though, not even a deflected ball is going in. We have to somehow force the ball over the line again, perhaps even from a set-piece.”

Thomas Delaney: “The game was a battle, Mainz are always very physical. We lost 1-0 for the third game in a row due to a set-piece; that cannot be allowed to happen to us. We have to break this pattern now. We’re lacking a successful result; we haven’t experienced that for a long time. Rather, we’re in a negative spiral. The current results have something to do with self-confidence. We of course have the run in the back of our minds. Now it’s important that we continue to work well in training. We’re level on points with the other teams. We have to start scoring again and work on our self-confidence. The quality is there in the team; we now have to show it on the pitch.”

Pellegrino Matarazzo: “We knew what was awaiting us and we wanted to hold our own. That’s partly why we tried to play one or two long balls. Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to impose our game for long enough. Mainz had many set-pieces and scored the goal that way. We changed our structure by making substitutions in the second half, but we unfortunately didn’t create enough chances. There’s a clear pattern in our games; we have to work on that.”

Bo Svensson (1. FSV Mainz 05 coach): “It was the difficult match we expected. We coped with it very well and pushed Hoffenheim back into their half in spells, even though we had few goalscoring chances. I liked that and we also deserved to lead at the break in my opinion. It was slightly wilder in the second half; we were not so well organised then. We had a little luck at that point because we allowed Hoffenheim space. We’re very happy that we came out on top in this close game.”