Werder lack bite and Champions League feeling

Werder Bremen lost 0-0! At least that’s how it felt as the individual players began to describe their feelings after the game. The disappointment was massive. On their own home turf, Werder couldn’t overcome a side that they dominated over the full 90 minutes: “We are familiar with this calculation game but in the end the result just wasn’t right,” remarked a frustrated Thomas Schaaf, and he continued: “We were of course hoping for something very different here and that’s why I’m disappointed. I am annoyed that we spoke about exactly what we had to expect yet we still weren’t determined enough to get the goal we needed.”

For the Werder coach, the situation was one similar to how things went before the happy-end against Energie Cottbus in their last Bundesliga game: “I got the feeling that we were sitting back with the notion in our heads that the goal would somehow come, just the way it did at the weekend. We tried to play too much football! We just thought we were so good, but still we couldn’t force the goal.”

It was an opinion that Klaus Allofs shared: “That wasn’t the amount of pressure that one would expect to generate in a Champions League game at home. We didn’t find our way through to goal and we didn’t win the necessary challenges. The team weren’t really as determined to win it as I had hoped they would be. I hope that they show more feeling for the Champions League in the next game than they did tonight.”

source: werder.de

Mertesacker: “Who knows how valuable that point could be”

Not even at their fifth attempt in succession could Werder Bremen manage a win in their opening game in a Champions League group stage. The disillusionment was clear, the Green-Whites would so dearly loved to have claimed all three points: “I hope the team are disappointed! I expect that everybody knows what they have thrown away here. We would have gone to Milan on the back of a win. That would have given us more security, but also offered us more opportunities to vary our game when we went there,” commented Klaus Allofs.

In spite of wasting an initial chance, the battle for the two top places at the top of Group B is still wide open. It was the message that those involved in the game portrayed as they dealt with their frustration. Head coach Thomas Schaaf said: “The situation in our group hasn’t changed. Even if we’d won we would have still needed to continue gathering points.”

The plan is now to quickly pick up those dropped points: “We missed out on the chance to put ourselves in a very good position. Really you have to win your home games if you want to progress in the competition. Now we must travel to Milan, and we don’t have much to lose there, but we are capable of taking something from that game,” said Clemens Fritz. Per Mertesacker agreed: “I don’t believe that means that we have forgotten how to play the game. We will rise to the challenge. Who knows how valuable that point could be.”

source: werder.de

Werder – Anorthosis Famagusta highlights

10 minutes highlights from the last night match: