The joy of winning still hasn’t worn off after a few days. Max Kruse’s brace, his first in Werder colours, propelled them to victory on Saturday. “It was a great moment. The euphoria hasn’t worn off yet,” said Kruse in a conversation with WERDER.DE. His goals meant that SVW picked up their third win on the trot, a small but crucial streak – and Kruse sees this no differently.
Confidence grows again following the nine consecutive points. “I think that the win has topped up our confidence. Even when we played better football in the first few games, we didn’t expect such results. At the end of the day, the points are all that counts and when we can haul them in, regardless of what style of football we play, obviously we’re happy to take what we can get,” stated the 28-year-old.
As of late, the ball has hardly found its way into Bremen’s net, which isn’t an achievement that sits well the Green-Whites’ defensive players alone. “In the last three games we’ve only conceded one goal. That’s something to be happy about,” believes Kruse. Yet as a centrepiece of the attack and as the team’s second highest goalscorer with six goals to his name, he hopes to show the fans some attractive football as soon as possible. “We know that we have a long ways to go yet, and that we simply can’t go on performing like this in the next eleven games. Overall we’ve improved our football and the staff are implementing their tactics well, but we’re lacking passion and commitment in our challenges. We want to resume playing good football,” said Kruse.
The next opportunity for the team to combine their impressive performances on the pitch from their first three games of the year along with their impressive results in the last three games, will come in Leverkusen on Friday afternoon. In similar circumstances to two weeks ago, the Green-Whites will play under the floodlights away. More importantly, Bayer Leverkusen have just had a change of manager. For Kruse though, these two factors don’t play a role in determining the outcome of the match. “I’m not concerning myself with it. It’s a normal 90 minute game in which we can come away with three points at the end of. Whether their change of manager is an advantage or a disadvantage will become evident on Friday.”
