“We believed we could turn it around” - Freiburg match reaction

We gathered the thoughts of the players and coaches after Borussia’ 2-1 home win over SC Freiburg on Saturday night.

Denis Zakaria: We were determined to pick up the three points today. We believed that we could turn it around still. We didn’t have a rhythm to our play, but that improved a lot in the second half – we made a tactical change and it paid off. We worked better together as a team and the two goals were our reward. We’re delighted with the three points.

Lars Stindl: We were very poor in the first half. We were lucky that Freiburg didn’t finish us off already. Apart from in the first few minutes following their goal, we didn’t have a foothold at all and weren’t winning challenges. We knew at the break that we had to step up our game. It was perhaps a little surprising that the changes worked as well as they did, but it was a quality response from the team. We won the won the ball back well and moved it around nicely. I think you could say we deserved to win.

Matthias Ginter: Freiburg played well and knew how we would approach it. They set up for the game really well. We were lucky to only be 1-0 down at the break. We changed things around at half time and that helped us get into the game; we won the ball back earlier and scored two goals.

Christoph Kramer: We were pressing them at the wrong times in the first half. Freiburg used their full backs well, made the pitch wide and they worked it into our area very quickly. We fixed that in the second half and things improved significantly. We were much more organised after we switched things up and were starting to be first to the ball.

Trainer Marco Rose: Freiburg played very well in the first half and caused us real problems out wide. I certainly don’t think it was down to a lack of effort on our part, but rather because Freiburg had good positional play and did a great job. We were a yard off occasionally, sometimes two, and we were left very open at the back on four or five occasions. We made some adjustments at half time and we had a much better second 45. We created some good attacking situations and scored three goals, although one of them was chalked off and that made for a nervy finish. It was a clear offside for Freiburg’s goal though. That was an important victory for us. There are certain things that we will have to address from the game, but I saw a lot of positives. The lads deserved the win with the character, fight and quality football that they demonstrated in the second half.

SC Freiburg head coach Christian Streich: It’s a painful defeat, particularly given how the match played out. When you have a first half like that with so many chances, you have to get at least a second goal. We had prepared for our opponents and knew that we’d be up against a back four, so we set up accordingly. That worked well in the first half, but then Gladbach took a more aggressive approach and went to a back-three. That changed the make-up of the game. Their equaliser was a very unfortunate goal to concede. When you make mistakes and don’t have luck on your side either, you end up losing games like that.