Domenico Tedesco: It was a game of two halves

The Royal Blues had to settle for a point on Saturday (15/12) against Augsburg. Head coach Tedesco and the players were frustrated with the first half performance, but saw a clear improvement in the second half, in which the team could have won the game. schalke04.de has summarised the post-match reactions.

Domenico Tedesco:

It was a game of two halves. We barely stood up to Augsburg in the first half. Our plan was to get the ball into the final third consistently, which we weren’t able to do. We deserved to be 1-0 down at the break. I then made two subs and changed our tactics. We had a bit more control of the game in the second half and eventually played well. We could have even won the game near the end. We took Steven Skrzybski off as he was in danger of seeing a second yellow card – it was a game with a lot of tackling in it. We brought Nabil Bentaleb on as we wanted someone in the centre of midfield who was good in the air. We will have to live with the point, although we are obviously disappointed we didn’t take all three.

Manuel Baum:

After losing four games in a row, it was obviously not that easy for some of my players to prepare for this game. We defended well against their change in system and started the second half equally well. We won a lot of balls and tackles in the midfield, but didn’t get that second goal we needed. They then had a counter attack, which we actually defended well. The ball unfortunately fell to an opponent, who hammered it home from distance. It wasn’t easy afterwards to keep our heads. Although we didn’t play that well after conceding, I am still pleased with my team’s overall performance.

Daniel Caligiuri:

We knew what to expect from the game today. Augsburg play a lot of long balls and attack second balls with aggression. We were prepared for that, so I’m not sure why we didn’t deal with their style of play like we had planned to. In the first half we were always too late in the tackles. We found the right words at half time, changed our formation and then played a lot better. We need to improve our set-pieces – they weren’t good enough today.

Bastian Oczipka:

We had hoped for more than a point from today’s game. Our first half performance (especially the first 15-20 minutes) wasn’t good enough. We switched things up at the break. Haji Wright held the ball up well and we managed to get more chances. We will take a point still – we still have two really important games on Wednesday and next Saturday.

Domenico Tedesco: It was a game of two halves