Dimitrios Grammozis: We weren’t at the races

Dimitrios Grammozis and Freiburg coach Christian Streich reflected on Saturday’s game at the Schwarzwald-Stadion (17/4). Omar Mascarell and Ralf Fährmann also spoke to the press after the defeat.

Dimitrios Grammozis:

Right from the start of today’s game, we weren’t in it like we were over the past few weeks. The things that have made us good recently – passion, strong tackling, intensity and compactness – were all lacking today. We weren’t at the races at all. You have to give 100% in our situation. I hope the players have recognised that. I wasn’t happy with the performance today, it just wasn’t us. It wasn’t the team that I have got to know, that has played well in recent weeks and worked hard. It was a really disappointing 90 minutes this afternoon. We have to recover from this quickly with the game in Bielefeld on Tuesday coming up very soon.

Christian Streich:

I wasn’t happy in Bielefeld last time out, while I’m really pleased today. We put in a good performance and there were a lot of good things on show. We played with conviction, both on and off the ball. We were great without the ball and the three attackers did really well. We mixed things up when building the play, using three or four different players. Schalke weren’t as good as they were in their last two games, but part of that is down to us.

Ralf Fährmann:

It’s hard to find the right words so soon after the final whistle. It just hurts so much. It was a bad performance by us in all regards today. We were completely outplayed and they fully deserved the win.

Omar Mascarell:

You have to be on it from the first second in Freiburg and we weren’t today. We were almost always one step behind them in the first 10 minutes. We had high hopes for the game so it’s really disappointing the way it went.

Dimitrios Grammozis: We weren’t at the races