Huub Stevens: I’m looking forward to my rest now

After his final press conference as head coach, Huub Stevens thanked his colleagues for their hard work. VfB coach Nico Willig wished the Dutchman all the best and added that the 65-year-old is one of his role models. Daniel Caligiuri and Alexander Nübel also gave their thoughts after the game. schalke04.de has summarised all their post-match reactions.

Huub Stevens

Huub Stevens:

Best of luck to VfB for their relegation play-off games. Stuttgart showed today that they belong in the Bundesliga. I’m not happy with the way we played, as I don’t think we showed what we’re capable of. We can play a lot better than that. I’m disappointed for our fans most of all, as they supported us fantastically today. I’d like to thank them once again.

I’d also like to thank our whole coaching team for their work. We also can’t ignore those people who aren’t in the spotlight at the club. They suffered this season and worked extremely hard too. The last months have taken a lot out of me, but have still been fun. I was extremely annoyed at times – but that’s part of the job. Now I’m looking forward to be able to relax again.

Nico Willig:

Our difficult season will now go into extra-time. We have the honour of playing two relegation play-offs. Since I’ve been here, we’ve taken seven points and kept three clean sheets. These are positives, which we will take into those games. Today’s game wasn’t particularly entertaining and we didn’t put a few things into practice that we’d wanted to. We weren’t dynamic, efficient or determined enough – we’ll have to improve on this for the play-off games. Nevertheless, we still believe in ourselves and want to put our best possible performance in on Thursday.

I’d also like to congratulate my opposite number Huub Stevens. He has always led his sides brilliantly. Maybe I can get some tips from him on how to avoid relegation. As a young coach, he is a real role model to me.

Daniel Caligiuri:

The coaching team took over at a very difficult time. Huub Stevens and his colleagues managed to get us back on track. Despite that, we cannot be happy with the way our season went. I’m happy our last few games were slightly better. Next season can only be better, and I’m certain it will be!

Alexander Nübel:

This was my first half a year as the number one goalkeeper, so despite the poor results, I can look back on the past few months in a positive way. We are happy that we’ve avoided the relegation play-offs and our last few results haven’t been that bad. My season isn’t over yet – I will be playing for the U21s in the European Championship. It will be my first tournament, so I’m really excited for it.