ZIEREIS LAUDS "NO-HOLDS-BARRED ANALYSIS" OF FIRST-HALF PERFORMANCE
Saturday, 16. October 2021, 17:30 Uhr
Head coach and players alike were delighted with the swashbuckling second-half performance at FC Heidenheim yet were equally quick to point out that there is plenty of work left to do.
Head coach Timo Schultz: "It was a game of two halves. Heidenheim pressed hard and high in the first half and in so doing forced the goal. We didn't look good in that phase. As the game wore on, we were able to escape their stranglehold but didn't see our chances through to the end. That was the difference in the second half, when we did do that and scored some nice goals."
Frank Schmidt (Heidenheim coach): Congratulations, Timo! We had a good grip on the proceedings in the first half and forced the mistake in St. Pauli's build-up play. We should then have gone on to lead by two or three. We didn't allow any clear-cut goalscoring opportunities and had the game under control to a certain degree. The only shortcoming was that we only led 1-0. The second point of criticism is that we gave the game away within five minutes. It's a hard defeat to take. With the chances we had in the first half, we could have come away with more today.
Maximilian Dittgen: At half-time we pulled together and talked about what we wanted to change. We were a lot busier in the second half. It's so much fun at the moment but we have to be careful. We haven't reached the end of the road yet. There's still lots of room for improvement.
Philipp Ziereis: "We ran a no-holds-barred analysis of the first half in the dressing room and went back out with high ambitions. We did lots of things better after the interval, which is why we deserved to win in the end. It speaks for us as a team that we turned the game around after falling behind early."
Guido Burgstaller: " The equaliser did us good. We were in the ascendency after that. We struggled in the first 30 minutes and Heidenheim could have been two up in that time. In the second half, we were the better team. We've taken a step forward in the last few months in that we don't get knocked off track by an early goal and are able to get it together at half-time, which is what we did in the dressing room today. The season is a long one. We're top of the league just now and we want to build on that. You can't call us a top team yet. We have to keep developing, working on ourselves and challenging ourselves."
Photos: Witters