“Missed out on a huge opportunity to achieve something big” | OneFootball

Werder's DFB-Pokal journey came to an end in Bielefeld (Photo: WERDER.DE).

Post-match reaction following defeat in Bielefeld

The Green-Whites were left visibly disappointed after failing to reach the semi-finals of the DFB-Pokal on Tuesday evening. WERDER.DE have summed up all the post-match reaction from within the team following the 2-1 defeat at Arminia Bielefeld.

Ole Werner, head coach: “It’s difficult to sum up how I’m feeling. I’m disappointed about the way we played in the first half. We proved after the break that we’re capable of more. Before then, we just weren’t able to win enough of our duels. We knew that they wouldn’t just sit back, but we didn’t manage to get the ball up the pitch enough. Today’s defeat wasn’t because we didn’t play as a team, but rather because we just didn’t play well. We missed out on a huge opportunity to achieve something big and to continue our cup journey. It’s up to us to make sure that we’re able to end the season on a positive note with the 11 league games we have left.”

Niklas Stark: “We didn’t manage to perform to the best of our abilities, especially in the first half. There were plenty of small things that made the difference. We need to address these and get through this together as a team. It’s impossible to find an explanation for everything in football — sometimes, everything’s going great and other times, it’s not. Right now, it’s not going well for us.”

Leonardo Bittencourt: “They took full advantage of our first mistake and punished us for it. You have to be able to adjust to the game here — they managed to close the gaps and we had to find ways of getting around that. We were able to do so in the second half, but not in the first. We always want to find ways of playing ourselves out of dangerous situations and had several opportunities after the break through Justin or Amos. However, we were deservedly knocked out based on our performance in the first half.”

Clemens Fritz, managing director for sport: “We’d all hoped for more. Having seen the first half, I have to be honest and say that it really wasn’t good enough to beat a third-division side. After the Freiburg game, we’d said that if we play the same way again, then it definitely wouldn’t be enough to win in Bielefeld, as we saw tonight. They played with a much higher intensity and we lost our way as a result. In the second half, we were then able to also display some of the same intensity and aggression. Everything before that was too little in order to earn a spot in the next round.”