BVB ended the first half of the season with a 4-2 defeat at Borussia Mönchengladbach and over the winter in a disappointing sixth place. After the game, not many of those involved were willing to comment on the catastrophic defensive performance against the Foals. Only Edin Terzic, Sebastian Kehl and Julian Brandt answered the reporters’ questions. The voices of the game, quoted via Sky and bvb.de:
About the game: “The week was very disappointing. That wasn’t just the defeat today, but also the game on Tuesday in Wolfsburg. We had big plans, I think in the first few actions you could feel what we were planning. Then we conceded the first goal after four minutes. However, we created far too many chances in the first half. We defended poorly at times, but you felt that we could have made it 3-3 before the break because we had a lot of good chances. We had high hopes for the second half, and that was done in the first minute and the goal we conceded. That pulled the plug on us.”
About the starting position in the second half of the season: “We’ll be in sixth place over the winter. That’s not what we’re aiming for. Before the game we said everything was close together and we didn’t know what today’s win would mean, whether we might be third until five. But we knew that in January we would be right in the middle of it. That didn’t work out. Now we have a deficit that we have to make up for. We’re not starting from zero, we’re negative. We have to draw the right conclusions and then attack again.”
“At half-time we felt like we were back on it. Then it takes 40 seconds to concede the fourth goal. After that we weren’t good enough. We allow way too much. Losing really hurts. When we “We can’t be successful defending like that. We’ll stay in sixth place. I don’t have to emphasize that that’s far from our goal. That will give us restless weeks. We have a few issues that we have to work on. Offensively how defensive.”
On the reasons for the defeat: “It was our own incompetence, all of us against the ball and in the first half also in front of goal. If you score two goals here, that’s a good foundation, but we have goals that are too easy because of our incompetence conceded. We failed to equalize and go into the second half with a better base. At the beginning of the second half we slept again. These are issues that we have had in recent weeks. We have Gladbach did very well today and they are the deserved winners.”
On the early goals conceded: “It’s not the first time I’ve been asked a question like that, I still don’t have an answer today. It’s probably a lack of concentration. My feeling was that we didn’t end so badly today, but the problem is that we conceded again. We had the ball for the first few minutes, we had a counterattack and we got the goal. It wasn’t the problem that we were completely bad, but we defended it badly . I don’t mean four or five players, I mean all of them.”
Conclusion on the World Cup break: “For the players who haven’t played for a long time and are here, but especially for those who are going away, it’s absolutely heavy luggage. It’s a shitty feeling because you can’t change anything. Losing on Fridays is a tad crappy because all teams can still score. However, we need to find the cut and rebuild.”
This article was originally published on 90min.com/de as BVB voices on Gladbach’s bankruptcy: “It will give us restless weeks”.
