“We can’t play like that”

How does one explain such a harsh defeat to Cologne? “It’s difficult to find the right words after a game like that. We didn’t implement any of our pre-match preparation. We cannot keep playing like that,” said maximilian Mittelstädt on Saturday after the 5-0 loss at home to 1. FC Cologne. We collected all the post-match quotes.

Niklas Stark: It was a hard day for us. We prepared ourselves really well for the game and we wanted to get all three points, but we didn’t show that out on the pitch. Cologne had all the luck. When you go three goals behind in a game like that, it take its toll mentally. And then when you can’t get a goal back, and instead concede another at the other end, that’s even worse. It was just a horrible game and a bad day for us. But now we have to stick together as a team and make sure that we win the upcoming games.

Maximilian Mittelstädt: It’s difficult to find the right words after a game like that. We didn’t implement any of our pre-match preparation. We conceded two goals early and we just weren’t able to come back from that. We have to put this game out of our minds now and concentrate on the upcoming matches. We cannot keep playing like that, but we know we just have to let it go now. It won’t be easy to get three points in any of our next few games, we know that. We weren’t fresh and mentally we weren’t good today, despite how much we’d prepared for the game. Now we have to recover as quickly as we can, get back in training and rediscover what makes us so good as a team. Of course it’s still possible for us to stay up and we’re motivated to do so.

Marius Wolf: It doesn’t need too much explaining, everyone saw that our performance wasn’t on – for me personally and for the entire team. We absolutely have to be better next week, and we have the put this one behind us. Everyone has to work on their own games, it starts with that, but then we have to come together as a team to get out of this situation. We weren’t potent enough in the first half, we couldn’t get going or find any way through. Then we conceded almost straight away, but we can’t capitulate the way we did today. In the second half we had two really good chances to start it off, if we’d have taken them it would’ve been 3-2, but instead the goals went the other way which was hard for us to swallow. The next five or six games will be so important for us if we’re to get out of this battle to stay up, and we know it won’t get any easier.