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Miron Muslic: Disappointed about the defeat, but very proud of the journey we're on together
The Royal Blues were beaten 2-1 at Eintracht Braunschweig on Sunday (21/12) in what was their final game of the calendar year. Following the loss on matchday 17, the two head coaches analysed the game, while captain Kenan Karaman and Ron Schallenberg also gave their thoughts on the 90 minutes and the first half of the season as a whole.
Miron Muslic:
Congratulations to Heiner Backhaus and to Eintracht Braunschweig. It was a fully deserved win, there’s no getting away from that. Over the past few weeks, we’ve been running on empty and having to compensate a lot, and you can’t keep that going indefinitely. Excluding the guys from the U23s and U19s, we only had 13 senior squad members available, four of them with limited minutes in their legs. We knew it was going to be another tricky and high-intensity game. Braunschweig handled it excellently and deserved to win. In the end, we still had two big chances and could have snatched another late goal, but that wouldn’t really have reflected the flow of the match.
We’re disappointed with our performance and very critical of ourselves. This self-criticism is also the reason we’re sitting on 37 points – because we constantly want to improve. We’re disappointed about the defeat, but very proud of the journey we’ve been on together for the past six months. Over the next few days, we need to take a breather, switch off and reset. We’re hoping that one or two players return fit so that we have more options again. Over the course of the season, you’ve seen how strong we can be when we have more depth on the bench. In the new year, we’ll go again together.
Heiner Backhaus:
We were sharp, we played with real intensity and our pressing was good. We won a lot of second balls. Even in the first half, you could already feel the game developing in our favour and we could have taken the lead then. Overall, it was a fully deserved win for us.
Ron Schallenberg:
We never really got into the game. Braunschweig played in a way that’s usually our strength, but they executed it better than we did today. In the end, it was a deserved defeat.
Kenan Karaman:
We have to be very critical of our performance today. Braunschweig played with real intensity and aggression – exactly the kind of things we actually want to bring to the pitch ourselves. In the final 15 minutes we committed more players forward and showed more bravery, but in the end it wasn’t enough. All things considered, we didn’t deserve to win the game today.
We’ve also been critical of ourselves in recent weeks, even when we’ve picked up points. With the ball, we didn’t hurt them in the areas that were there for us and we used the space poorly.
When you’re playing against a Braunschweig side that’s strong on the counter, you will then be punished – and they were clinical with their chances. Even so, we can be proud of our first half of the season – and we’ll hit the ground running again in the new year.
