FC St. Pauli

Head coach Timo Schultz: "Many congratulations to Schalke 04 on promotion to the Bundesliga. You saw it through, you've done it. We're obviously disappointed. It's hasn't been a normal week and in general we've suffered a few setbacks that hurt. I'm proud of the lads, but on the other hand we have to recognise that Schalke deserved the three points today."

Dennis Smarsch: "We gave a great performance but then we made a bad start to the second half. We'll have to have another look whether it was a penalty or not. We weren't brave enough after that and made mistakes. The red card didn't play into our hands either."

Jackson Irvine: "It's hard to analyse the game right now. It's difficult at this level when you concede a few seconds after the restart. It's a tough lesson for us but we have to learn from it. Congratulations to Schalke, they deserved it."

Darko Churlinov (FC Schalke 04): "I knew we'd come back, so I wasn't panicking at all after their second goal. We simply weren't taking our chances. This is amazing, you don't experience things like this very often."

Mike Büskens (FC Schalke 04 head coach): "The win and getting promoted was for the many hundreds of thousands of Schalke fans. It's been an incredible journey up to today with a sensational spirit that we've developed. We missed a lot of chances and then St. Pauli scored with their first attempt. At half-time I told the lads it had been the best first-half performance I'd seen from this team. We didn't want to lose our composure, it would have been all over bar the shouting at 3-0. Instead, we wanted to be bold and keep going forward. Dreams don't come true by snapping your fingers, you have to work hard for them and the lads did that outstandingly  well today."

Photos: Witters