We gathered the thoughts from the players and coaches after the Foals were beaten 1-0 at home by Mainz 05 on Sunday.
Julian Weigl: The game was quite turbulent when I came on towards the end. We had to deal with a lot of breakaways, but we kept trying to find the equaliser right until the end. We had a couple of headed chances in the closing stages, but unfortunately, I wasn’t able to help us come away with a point in the end. There was more to be had in the first half. Mainz started strongly and carried a real threat going forward, but the more the half went on, the more we got into our stride and became more dominant. We had three or four big chances and if we had taken one, I think the game would have gone very differently. Luck wasn’t on our side in the second half. A lot of the little things that decide a game went against us.
Jonas Hofmann: It’s a defeat that hurts because it was avoidable. We didn’t start well; we didn’t have the right solutions and just waited for chances to counter. We improved around the half-hour mark and created more opportunities from open play, but we didn’t get the goal. We played better football when we were a man down than when we had eleven. We had enough chances to get a result today, but it just wasn’t to be. We gave it our all and fought hard to try and get a goal. It was nice of the fans to give us the reception they did after the game, although it makes not getting a result for them today tougher. We won’t let our heads drop though and will go again. We have two tricky games coming up now against Freiburg and Leipzig and we have to go into them with positivity.
Daniel Farke: We’re not happy with the result, but I thought the performance was very good apart from the opening period. We didn’t start well, although Mainz weren’t exactly creating chance after chance either. We battled our way into the game and then we did a lot right. Unfortunately, we wasted a number of clear-cut chances before the break. We had to take Nico Elvedi off at half time, then Alassane Plea followed soon after. We then got an unfortunate red card because Karim Onisiwo is actually well offside, but the ball came to him via Marvin Friedrich’s shoulder. Then the free-kick flies right into the top corner. Somehow all the things that could go wrong in football happened one after the other and I think that’s why we lost today.
Mainz 05 head coach Bo Svensson: We played really well in the first half and were the better side I thought. We created some really good chances from open play, had a lot of intensity in our game and pressed well. We were a little lucky at times, but I was still very happy with the first 45. We started the second half well and got our goal. We weren’t the smartest in how we dealt with being a man up; Gladbach were the better side at times oddly. We were fortunate not to concede the equaliser in the end. There are a lot of positives we can take from today’s game though.
