Jantschke: “We need to keep up this team spirit”

Tony Jantschke made his comeback from a long spell on the sidelines due to injury in the Foals’ 2-1 victory over FC Bayern München on Friday night. The 31-year-old gave an interview after the win and spoke about his return, the match itself and Gladbach’s upcoming league fixtures.

Tony, how did it feel to make your comeback after a long time out through injury?

Tony Jantschke: The first game back after a tough facial injury is always a bit strange – unfortunately I’ve suffered quite a few injuries in my career. I also hadn’t played much football before that, featuring just once in the first half of the season. I’m therefore even more thankful to the coach for this opportunity and that we won the match.

How would you evaluate the game?

Jantschke: Bayern really put the pressure on at the start of the game and made a lot of runs in behind. It was difficult to defend that with our spacing, and it’s difficult for every team. But then we began to manage that better and started to be better on the ball and enjoy more space ourselves. The equaliser got us right back in the game and we had a lot of good opportunities on the break which we unfortunately weren’t able to convert. Bayern are always a threat right up to the final whistle, and you saw that clearly in the second half.

The build-up to the game was dominated by Bayern’s many absentees. How did you deal with that as a team?

Jantschke: Bayern are still Bayern. Even if there was a lot of talk pre-game about the Corona cases in their squad, we were still facing off against a world-class team come kick off. We don’t need to dwell on it too much, as Bayern still had plenty of quality in attack in Gnabry, Müller, Lewandowski and Musiala. We also had a few players unavailable which were significant losses for our squad.

What can you take away from this match going into the remainder of the season?

Jantschke: We absolutely need to keep up the team spirit which we showed tonight. The players that came off the bench gave us a real boost and they fought hard. You could see that a few of the lads that started the game had given it their all and didn’t have much left in the tank. We now need to get even closer as a unit. We didn’t do very well in the first half of the season in terms of our points tally, but now we need to work at it together and the game in Munich was a step in the right direction.

How do you view the upcoming matches in the league?

Jantschke: It doesn’t matter at all who we play in the season and when, because we have to play against everybody. Our next two Bundesliga matches are at home to Leverkusen and Union Berlin, and we absolutely want to win this game to add to our points tally. We’ve not put ourselves in a very pleasant or comfortable position, so we want to get out of it as fast as we can.