Once again an Italian team failed to win a game at Weser-Stadion. And once again Werder played excellently in Europe, scoring three goals and grabbing the victory. But there was little feeling of...
Once again an Italian team failed to win a game at Weser-Stadion. And once again Werder played excellently in Europe, scoring three goals and grabbing the victory. But there was little feeling of...
Once again an Italian team failed to win a game at Weser-Stadion. And once again Werder played excellently in Europe, scoring three goals and grabbing the victory. But there was little feeling of euphoria after the game. One could sense that the concentration looking forward to the return leg in a week had already begun.
"This Italian team was too strong to think that we have already advanced. Every one of us knows that we will need a very spirited performance in Udine," said Per Mertesacker. "They have very strong individual and technically-advanced players who can always push forward. We saw that quite a few times. The public does not realise how strong this team really is. Therefore we are very happy that we took advantage of our chances and won 3-1. Things went very, very well in front of the goal."
Keeper Tim Wiese also paid the Italians a lot of respect. "To be honest, I didn't expect them to be that strong. They have a very good team. They got past our defence a few times with some fine though balls. And they scored their goal," said the keeper.
Head coach Thomas Schaaf was not only aggravated about the goal allowed, after seeing his team play up and down before. "I am happy that we won. I am happy that we scored three goals. That was not at all easy against Udine. We have often had games where we created a lot of chances but couldn't use them. We were effective and that's important. But not everything was wonderful. We gave our opponents too many opportunities. And after scoring our goals we were far too excited and thus careless. That is tough to turn back around," said the coach. But a repeat performance next week should be enough...
