“We tried everything” | OneFootball

Markus Krösche, Dino Toppmöller and Robin Koch express their disappointment after the 3-1 defeat to Mainz.

Head coach Dino Toppmöller: “The result feels strange. We had a great opening period, great energy on the pitch and could’ve led 2-0 after 15 minutes. Suddenly we’re 2-0 down, though. We tried everything, kept pushing, brought on fresh legs, changed things around and had some gilt-edged chances. Overall we did a lot of things really well. We’re conceding goals too easily – the third goal was also avoidable. When the disappointment has passed, we can look back on six months in which we did a lot of things really well. Now we’ll rest and go again from 2 January.”

Board member for sport Markus Krösche: “The result is extremely tough to take, we shouldn’t have lost this game. Ultimately we made too many simple mistakes. I feel sorry for Kaua, he’s already produced a lot of good performances and will learn from this. I can’t fault the lads, they threw everything at it and didn’t give up.”

Robin Koch: “Everyone was really disappointed in the dressing room. Nothing went for us, Mainz had three chances and scored three goals. The last few games don’t fit with our good first half of the season. We were there for Kaua as a team on the pitch. He’s a young player, these things happen. But he’s a good lad, he’ll come back from it and this match will help him in his development. We have a few days off now to get a bit of space. We can take our minds off football a bit during the break and give the body some rest. In the new year we want to continue from where we started and built on for so long this season.”