Huub Stevens: My most difficult job

Huub Stevens:

We didn’t the start the game badly, but then they scored with their first shot. After that our heads went down. We then had the chance to equalise, but didn’t take it. Our heads went down even more once we went 2-0 behind.

We switched a few things around for the second half and started well again, pushing forwards. But then we made mistakes again, that we simply cannot afford to be making. A good team like Hoffenheim will take advantage of that. Today has just reaffirmed that this is my most difficult job ever. Nobody can underestimate the enormity of our current situation. All four of our remaining games will be difficult.

Julian Nagelsmann:

I’m happy with the result, whereas the game itself was slightly chaotic. We didn’t start well and Schalke were on top in the opening stages. We then went 1-0 up from nowhere and stabilised ourselves. It still took us a while to find our structure.

Schalke then switched to a diamond after the break, so we wanted to put a lid on that, just as we have done well in the past few weeks. That took a while and we didn’t communicate well with one another. Their goal came as a result of this. We were then perhaps a bit lucky that nothing more came of our uncertainties. Once we had scored our third goal everything was fine again. From them on, we played good football. The win isn’t undeserved, but the scoreline definitely flattered us. It was an important result for us in terms of the table.

Jonas Carls:

I was told in the pre-match meeting that I was going to start and I was really excited for the chance. I was slightly nervous, but my teammates calmed me down. I’m really sad that we couldn’t take anything from today’s game. We lost because of several things. You could see in parts that we can play football, but ultimately that doesn’t matter.  It’s never nice to lose, so we are all feeling very low right now.