"My dad told me..."

Finally getting the just rewards for a good performance against a side in the upper reaches of the table: our Herthaner had a clear aim going into the match against Leverkusen, and they achieved their goal thanks to a committed, passionate performance. “We really needed this win,” said Deyovaisio Zeefuik of the 3-0 win in which he gave his side an early lead. Hertha fans can thank Deyo’s father for the opener: “My dad said before the game that I should just trust myself and shoot more often when I’m in the right position. That makes it even better to score so early on. I’m happy that I was able to help the team with my goal,” said our number 42 with a smile. herthabsc.de sums up the match reaction.

Lukas Klünter: In recent interviews I’ve had to say that we played well but didn’t score the goals. It felt as though we should’ve earned more points than we actually have. We finally managed to get our reward today. It all worked from the start, you could see that and it gave us confidence. We put the plan into action well, we were good at the back. I just asked Deyo whether he meant to score with his ‘cross’ for the first goal… (grins). He’s already shown us in training that he is capable of scoring goals like that. We have to keep this going after the international break. The Berlin derby is a hugely important match!

Niklas Stark: We put in a great performance, we were compact and earned the three points. We can’t let ourselves relax, but we can take a breath during the international break. After that, it’s straight into the derby - a really special game for us. We still need more points so we have to keep going. Our plan worked well, especially in the first half. We worked hard on it but we also saw that there are some things to improve on. Everyone was at it, and if we play like that then we can form attacks like the ones that paid off against Leverkusen. Overall we managed to keep the spaces tight as a team, and we got stuck into the tackles well. Obviously we knew the results elsewhere but we all just wanted to win the game.

Deyovaisio Zeefuik: We really needed this win. I’m happy that I was able to help the team with my goal. My dad said before the game that I should just trust myself and shoot more often when I’m in the right position. That makes it even better to score so early on. We played really well as a team across the 90 minutes and we have to keep doing that over the games to come. We have quality and we have survival in our own hands!