"Bom jogo", or something to that effect exclaimed Tim Borowski patting defende Naldo heartily on the back. After the final whistle in Mainz, the Werder midfielder picked up the phrase from translator Roland Martinez-Vazquez, who has been an ever present member of the Werder party, and bestowed the words on his new South American colleague.
"Well played!" was also the opinion of the rest of his teammates after the Brazilian, who has only been a member of the squad for a mere two weeks, incured a few initial hiccups. "That was a super performance from him today, he's improving all the time. Of course it's clear that he'll keep getting better, after such a change you can't expect a player to be immediately on song", explained yesterdays team captain Torsten Frings after the game who almost took the words right out of general manager Klaus Allofs mouth. "He has distinctly improved which is aided by the fact that he is open to instruction. He took everything from this week on board and was much tighter on his man today, very determined and had a lot to do with our clean sheet", claimed Allofs who expects some patience with his new an still young signing. "He is only 22 years old, it's only normal that he is not immediately 100%."
The Brazilians secret concerning his impressive performance in his opinion is directly connected to his intensive discussions with defensive colleague Petri Pasanen: "We spoke together at lenght this week with the result being a better understanding", reported Naldo, who is eagar to play the next match: "Petri is a great central defender and I'm sure we'll continue to harmonise better."
Naldos' improvement was just one peformance that stuck out in a clearly improved Werder side which obviously wanted to forget the Basel incident. Naldo noticed himself: "The whole team were much more compact today. Everyone fought for each other, which was the difference to Wednesday. The team oozed a winning mentality from the outset." Klaus Allofs agreed with these statements: "We really defended ourselves today and that was contrary to Wednesday. The first goal gave us even more stability. The severity of the critisism due to our performance was correct but today we answered our critics."
Werders physical robustness on Sunday evening was clearly the opposite of that from four days previously. This time both teams got stuck in in search of a win. "It was a tough tie when at times a little niggly - neither side were willing to give the other an inch. Mainz wanted their first three points and we wanted our second", explained Patrick Owomoyela about the at times over vealousness on the pitch. Bremens acceptance of this situation compared to last Wednesday could be related to their, until then, negative record against Mainz. "Last seasons two games against them were surely somewhere still in the back of our heads, we'd dropped four points against them which we wanted to put to rights", in Miroslav Kloses opinion. Tim Borowski summed up: "We were more aggressive and tactically better which in turn betters the offensive flow of your game."
Even the hosts had to admit that the Werder win was a deserved one. Trainer Jürgen Klopp commented: "We played well and the game was quite open for a long time, we were just unfortunate that Bremen played so well too. They were better in two important scenes and that won them the game."
Johnnie Muldoon