Paul Seguin: We couldn’t find the spaces that we wanted to exploit

Sunday (23/2) was a difficult day for the Royal Blues. A 2-0 defeat in Darmstadt was compounded by a red card for Max Grüger and a suspected ACL injury for Zaid Tchibara. Head coach Kees van Wonderen, Amin Younes and Paul Seguin were amongst those who spoke after the match.

SV Darmstadt 98 - FC Schalke 04

Kees van Wonderen:

I saw more of a desire to win from Darmstadt than I did from my team. You have to give everything every week in this league. There are no easy games and no guaranteed points. You have to push yourself, and we didn’t do that enough today. That was the difference.

Florian Kohfeldt:

We put in a very good performance as a team and deserved to win. You could see throughout the match that we’ve managed to build on the good teamwork that we always show. We had stability across the pitch, including in defence.

Amin Younes:

We shouldn’t be going 2-0 down after five minutes. Darmstadt showed us in the reverse fixture that there was still plenty of time to level the game. This was just a tough day all round though. We had a lot of important players unavailable for the game. That shouldn’t be an excuse, but it doesn’t make things any easier. If it had been 0-0 for longer, I’m positive the game could have gone either way. We have so much quality that we can always score a goal. The way the game went was obviously difficult for us, however. We now have to keep working and make sure that we put in a good performance and win against Preußen Münster on Friday.

Paul Seguin:

Darmstadt were under a lot of pressure and then scored two goals within the space of just four minutes. That brought the stadium to life. I think taking an early lead played perfectly into Darmstadt’s hands. They wanted to sit back defensively, and now they could do exactly that. We, on the other hand, couldn’t find the spaces that we wanted to exploit. That’s disappointing, but we can’t let our heads drop. We’ve got an important match against Preußen Münster on Friday, and we’re desperate to win. Obviously, there’ve been a few changes to the team, but we’ve still got some very good attacking talent. I’ve got my fingers crossed that Zaid’s injury isn’t too bad. It’s awful for him and I wish him all the best. He’s got a promising career ahead of him.

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