Christian Gross: Our attacking football was enjoyable | OneFootball

Both head coaches spoke to the media after the 4-0 win over TSG 1899 Hoffenheim on Saturday (9/1), as well as returnee Sead Kolasinac.

We’re really pleased with the result and the three points and obviously for our fans too. We had to rely on our outstanding goalkeeper, Ralf Fährmann, in the first half. He was our rock at the back, saved everything and played brilliantly for the 90 minutes. The team grew in confidence after going 1-0 up – it was a great goal by Matthew Hoppe. We managed to get another in the second half and the second goal helped secure the win. I enjoyed the fact that we played attacking football and we want to carry on like that. A lot of things went our way today, which I’m aware of. I don’t want this to take away from the good moments from the game though. We will look to build on this and we know we’ve got plenty of tough games to come. Our confidence will hopefully grow after this win.

We played how we wanted to after 10 minutes and then had some really good chances, which we unfortunately didn’t take. This was a significant phase of the game as they then went ahead with their first real chance. Our second-half performance wasn’t what it should have been. We can’t defend that badly and that decided our fate.

We worked hard this week, which you could see today. We have Ralf Fährmann to thank after he kept us in the game with two or three great saves in the first half. We knew we would get our chances and we would have to take them – and we did. I said to the lads before the game that we need to get the basics right – our tackling, our pressing, our simple passes. All of our white shorts are dirty after the game and that’s what you need to see. We’re pleased about today’s win, but after a short break, we’ll start preparing for the next Bundesliga game. We already spoke about that in the changing room. We have 19 games to go and today was just a small step for us.