SV Werder Bremen were the weaker team for the majority of the game against Swabian side VfB Stuttgart, who are currently occupying third position in the Bundesliga table, and the mood among the players and staff in the mixed zone was seemingly low following the defeat. WERDER.DE have summarised the reaction to the loss.
Head coach Ole Werner: “We allowed them to get too many shots off, particularly in the first-half. We needed to defend better as a team and were certainly the weaker side up until the hour mark. After making some changes, we found our feet and had more success going forward. Stuttgart didn’t make the most of their chances and it was a still an open game at 1-0. In the end, we deserved to lose, and it was clear as to why Stuttgart are towards the top of the table and we’re in the bottom third.”
Head of professional football Clemens Fritz: “There’s no need to beat around the bush, we didn’t play well. Nothing went our way in the first 70 minutes. At the end of the day, we should be happy that we only conceded twice. In the past few weeks, we’ve proved that we’re capable of so much better – that didn’t show through on the pitch today. We have to recognise what went wrong and work on fixing it throughout the week.”
Marco Friedl: “We can be happy that we stayed in the game for as long as we did. Literally everything went wrong for us today. Stuttgart won every second ball and we didn’t stand a chance against them. I’ve rarely experienced a game where we’ve played so poorly. The bottom line is that it took us too long to start creating chances, and we fully deserved to lose. The team needs to go into next week’s game with a clean slate.”
Leonardo Bittencourt: "That was humbling, because at no point today did I feel like we could get something out of this game. We weren’t able to play like we did last week or find our feet at any point, despite the fact that Stuttgart didn’t even kill us off. The bottom line is that we absolutely deserved to lose. Of course it’s possible to lose, but it can’t happen to us in that way.”
Michael Zetterer: “We tried everything after a very tough 45 minutes, but nothing worked out, and we didn’t deserve it to today. Every player on the pitch needs to hold themselves accountable. I don’t feel as though everyone put 100 percent into their performance today.”
