LUHUKAY: "I SENSE A HEALTHY TENSION"
Sunday, 15. September 2019, 19:02 Uhr
FC St. Pauli welcome Hamburger SV to the Millerntor on Monday evening (2030 CET). At the official news conference on the eve of the derby, head coach Jos Luhukay spoke about...
… the opposition: "HSV have started the season well and given two outstanding performances away home, winning 4-0 at Nürnberg and 4-2 at Karlsruhe. Their goal difference is impressive. HSV are a well-structured side who work well together both in attack and at the back. That means we need to be wide awake when we're defending and find the right solutions when we're attacking. That's the challenge if we're to take our chance against what I consider the best team in the league. I hope it'll be a fair and interesting game. We're looking forward to it."
… the injury situation: "The positive news is that nothing happened in training yesterday. We have one more session today and I think we're OK. Six players are still carrying knocks and haven't resumed full training yet. Christopher Avevor, YiYoung Park und Aurel Loubongo are still in rehab. Luca Zander is set to return on Monday, and a decision on Henk Veerman and Philipp Ziereis will be taken on Tuesday or Wednesday. Ersin Zehir, Niklas Hoffmann and Jakub Bednarczyk will play for the Under-23s today. Of the new signings, James Lawrence and Matt Penney will be involved. We'll wait until after training today before deciding whether Sebastian Ohlsson and Youba Diarra will be in the squad."
… last season's 4-0 reverse: "It'll be down to the individual players and how they can put that experience to one side tomorrow night. Tomorrow we have the opportunity to make a positive start to the game and do our utmost to get a good result. It's a local derby. Emotion and passion go with the territory, but above all I'm hoping for an exciting game. We want to do all we can to maintain that for 90 minutes. I don't think the players need any extra motivation."
... the motivation levels before the derby: "I don't think it depends on how the last few games have gone because it's a derby. Past results are irrelevant. Tomorrow we'll try for 90 minutes to send our fans home happy. We're focused on playing football, winning the game and not being scared of losing. The sporting incentive for us is to build on our recent performances and cap that off with more points. We did a lot right in our last game but ended up making individual errors that had an influence on the result. If we can cut them out, we'll have a bigger chance tomorrow. I sense a healthy tension, but it's not as if I've had to the hold the players back in the last few days. It's all within reasonable limits. It's important we exude that tomorrow night and don't lose our heads."
… the key to beating the favourites: "I'll be brief. We have to maintain our defensive stability in order to keep a clean sheet. And going forward we need to create solutions to score one more than them. It'd take far too long to give a detailed analysis. HSV are big favourites and we're the outsiders. That's the situation going into the game."
Photo: Witters