Friedl and Schmidt after latest loss: “We clearly beat ourselves.”
Germany: Bundesliga
⚽ D Dijon (5), ⚽ A Maier (46)
By Peter Vice @ViseytheSS
SV Werder Bremen captain Marco Friedl and attacker Niklas Schmidt expressed frustration with the team’s defensive weakness after the defeat against Augsburg on Saturday.
| The new Bremen captain Marco Friedl | Schlesien711 CC-BY-SA 4.0 |
After the most impressive and complete game of the new calendar year last week, SV Werder Bremen is back in the defeat column. Ole Werner’s Hanseatic team traveled to the Bavarian town of Fuggerstadt on Saturday and ended up losing 2-1 to the very beatable hosts. For the young team captain Marco Friedl and attacker Niklas Schmidt, who both showed great games last week, it was a case of self-sabotage.
Friedl initially expressed his disappointment at the early 0:1.
“We had problems in the first ten minutes,” said the annoyed captain afterwards to the Sky microphones, “we knew it would be a wild game, that there would be a lot of long balls.”
“After we were the much better team in the first 45 minutes,” Friedl continued, “we became inattentive at the beginning of the second half. Augsburg meets the only chance of the second half. We clearly fought.”
Schmidt, who mourned a missed chance to equalize after Dion Beljo’s opening goal in the 6th minute, agreed that his own sloppy play had contributed to the result. Schmidt had plenty of time on the ball after a mistake by Renato Veiga in the 10th. He could have served the wide open Marvin Ducksch as well.
“In retrospect, that really hurts,” said Schmidt about the situation, “I could have taken a few more hits and gone a few meters further. We were simply not vigilant enough in the crucial actions. In the second half, we didn’t play enough clean moves.”
With 30 points collected over 23 matchdays, Bremen will almost certainly not be in the relegation battle this year. The climber can certainly be happy about that. However, any dreams of European qualification via a place in the Conference League playoffs can almost certainly be shelved after the recent result.