The faces of the two coaches could not have been more different after the final whistle. On the one side, Michael Frontzeck helped Arminia Bielefeld grab their first victory on the road...
The faces of the two coaches could not have been more different after the final whistle. On the one side, Michael Frontzeck helped Arminia Bielefeld grab their first victory on the road...
The faces of the two coaches could not have been more different after the final whistle. On the one side, Michael Frontzeck helped Arminia Bielefeld grab their first victory on the road. In fact the club had to wait 25 games since their last away win. Arminia also collected their first ever victory at Weser Stadion since its opening. And on the other side was Thomas Schaaf, who was not stuffed up just because of a cold.
"We were missing everything that we showed in Dortmund on Wednesday - self-assertion, activeness, playing together and switching up the tempo. It was way too quiet out there. There was nobody pushing one another. It was just too much mishmash. We could never really bring Bielefeld into trouble. Of course, we imagined that totally differently," said the coach.
Torsten Frings definitely imagined Saturday afternoon differently. His losing the ball in his own territory early in the second half resulted in the winning 2-1 goal. "We had just come back into the game and then I made a mistake. It was a risky play because I was already marked. But I thought I could get out of the situation so that we could stay in possession. But now I know that I just have to kick the ball away," said Frings. "I am really sorry. But this kind of mistake will only happen once."
Bremen did not want to make it an excuse that five starters - Frank Baumann, Naldo, Diego, Claudio Pizarro and Petri Pasanen - were missing against Bielefeld. "We had players on the pitch who deserve to be playing from the start. So we have to just deal with that," said head coach Thomas Schaaf. Manager Klaus Allofs said: "We were unable to compensate for our missing players as we had imagined." And Torsten Frings added: "It's just a fact that players like Diego and Claudio Pizarro can make all the difference in a game like this today."
