Thomas Reis: Achieved what we wanted, but can play better

FC Schalke 04 battled hard to win 3-1 in the first round of the DFB-Pokal at Eintracht Braunschweig on Friday night. Head coaches Thomas Reis and Jens Härtel anaylsed the game at the post-match press conference. Timo Baumgartl and Lino Tempelmann also spoke to the media.

DFB-Pokal

12.08.23, 00:04

Thomas Reis:

A cup game is about making the next round and that’s what we’ve done. The good thing, aside from the result, is that we have room for improvement too. It would be bad if that wasn’t the case. A few things went well, including the second goal – that was what we had planned to do and I wanted to see that more often. We weren’t able to calm the game down in the second half and it became a classic cup scrap, which we thankfully won. I believe we did deserve to get the victory. We were extremely clinical and scored three goals from five chances. I also think that Simon Terodde wasn’t offside in the first half and that we therefore should have had a penalty. We can definitely play better, are still improving and haven’t reached our peak yet. It’s only the start of the season.

Jens Härtel:

We kept things pretty tight today, so it was annoying to blow our lead in the first half. I thought we were well in the game at that point. Conceding a third goal in injury time can happen. I think we are heading in the right direction despite this defeat. We really tested Schalke, but we are just missing a few things at the moment.

Timo Baumgartl:

I’ll accept the blame for their goal. I didn’t want to put too much on the pass so that Marius could control it. Those are the kind of things that can just go wrong in football. I’m extremely happy that that mistake didn’t cost us anything in the end. The fact that we bounced straight back from that goal and then equalised was really important – only six minutes separated the two goals. It was a defensive battle this evening and we did a really good job in that regard. Braunschweig only had one good chance towards the end and Marius Müller made a great save.

Lino Tempelmann:

We knew that it wouldn’t be easy. Braunschweig pressed us high up the pitch and barely gave us room to breathe. I’m therefore happy that we scored twice in the first half and got the win. We did a lot right defensively this evening. We know that we have to be more creative going forward though. It’s still early in the season and we have to work on this, but I’m confident that we will keep on improving. My red card at the end was disappointing. My opponent was fresh on the pitch and I was tired in injury time, so I decided to bring him down just before he got into the box.

Tags

Seite teilen