“Showed a fighting mentality” - Hertha match reaction

We heard from Christoph Kramer and the two coaches after Borussia’s 2-2 draw away at Hertha BSC on Saturday.

Christoph Kramer: We had a clear game plan and that was working well for the opening exchanges. Once we went a man down though, we had to sit deeper and struggled to hold the ball up in attack. Nevertheless, we responded well to going behind and even got our noses in front before half time. Despite being down to ten men, I feel like we didn’t really have too many nervy moments at the back and played some good football ourselves, particularly when Hertha started to open up towards the end, so it almost feels like there was more in it for us today. We showed a fighting mentality and I think it was a good display overall.

Marco Rose: It was a great battling performance from the boys. We were a man down, but they put their bodies on the line, dug deep and managed to keep Hertha relatively quiet. They obviously had more of the ball with the man advantage, but apart from the period early in the second half where we were too passive, I thought we defended well and had a couple of decent chances. We ought to have had another penalty too really; Marcus Thuram clearly has his foot held when he goes down. It would have been nice to get the win today, but we can live with a point.

Hertha head coach Pál Dárdai: We’re happy with the performance, but not with the result. We should have played for the win more given that we had a man advantage. We were almost shocked after going 1-0 up. Instead of carrying on playing our game, it all turned a bit chaotic. We struggled to get on top of that from the touchline and so we needed the interval. We made three changes and that gave us more structure. Our second-half performance was much better in terms of our physicality and our desire to put the hard yards in. We had a lot more shots on goal and didn’t get caught on the counter, so I can’t fault the lads today.