Domenico Tedesco: "Good first half, bad second"

Domenico Tedesco

It was extremely important that we played cleverly. We did that before the break. We gave the team all the statistics – whenever Hertha have less possession, they never lose. We knew that they were a very tricky team when it comes to defending and transitional play.

The first half was good, but the second was bad. We know that and we need to learn from it. In the second half, lots of factors came together. The forwards were tired and were therefore unable to defend as much. On top of that, we weren’t winning the second balls often enough. The headers that Naldo won weren’t falling to Schalke players, instead Hertha were winning those ball. If you don’t win the second ball, you don’t have much possession. We need to go over that all again. In the end, we’re happy with the win, but Hertha could definitely have taken something from the game.

Breel Embolo

We played very well in the first half and controlled our opponents. After creating a few chances, we finally got a deserved opener. We were more aggressive. The second half wasn’t as good, but the coach said to us before the game that it didn’t matter how we won, just that we won. When Hertha changed things round and started playing more man-for-man, it became more difficult, but we saw the game out well and gave nothing away.

Daniel Caligiuri

I don’t think you can complain much about the first half because we played really we.. We were calm in our build-up play, compact in defence and overall played very well. Then we sat back too much. Perhaps that was because we had been conceding a lot of late goals recently. It was definitely a step in the right direction, picking up all three points. Every point counts in the run-in and we obviously want to pick up as many as possible.

Marko Pjaca

It was great to score my second goal at the VELTINS-Arena. I feel very happy at Schalke and am enjoying my time here. We created a lot of chances in the first half because we had lots of possession. In the second half we let Hertha bring the game to us, which made things quite tense towards the end.

Pal Dardai

We’re heading back to Berlin feeling sad. Both teams had their chances. In the first half we held them off well. Both Schalke and we had huge chances. After the break we were actually the more dominant team. Despite that we lost 1-0. We deserved more. All in all, it was good away performance from us, so I can’t blame my team for anything. The lads continued to attack, even after going behind. Unfortunately we couldn’t score and we need to learn from that.