“A huge step towards achieving our goal”

Daniel Heuer Fernandes: It was a tough away game, but we deserved to win. Today was a huge step towards achieving our goal, and we’re very close now. The elation is incredible. This stadium creates a really intense atmosphere, but we matched that both on the pitch and in the stands. We relished the defensive side of the game. Especially in the second half, there were a lot of duels and little battles. We embraced that and were fully up for it.

The last few weeks haven’t been the most successful, of course. That makes today’s performance even more to our credit. It has been, and still is, a difficult season. For many of us, everything was new at first, and we had to find our feet in the league. But we’ve always been clear in what we want to do and have handled things well as a team and as a club. That’s down to the coaching staff – we never got nervous and always believed in our game and our day-to-day work, even after setbacks. That says a lot about our togetherness, and it’s what makes us successful. Now we want to finally get the job done and achieve our goal.
 

“A very special win on an emotional level”

Albert Grønbæk: We needed this win. The past few weeks have been challenging. It was very important for us to bounce back after the last defeat, put in a performance like that and give something back to the fans. The way they are always right behind us is unbelievable. I’m very happy to have scored my first goal for HSV – that’s something really special. Sometimes you need a bit of luck as well. In the end, every goal counts the same (laughs). I also got an assist on top of that. It’s a joy to play alongside someone like Fabio Vieira. His match intelligence is outstanding – you can give him the ball in any situation and he’ll make something special happen. It was my first time playing in that position (left wing-back, editor’s note). I found it tough at times, but my teammates helped me a lot. All in all, I’m proud of the performance today.

Eric Huwer: This is a very special win on an emotional level. I had a good feeling all week. We’ve pulled even closer together, even more so than we already had over the course of the season. I’m delighted for everyone involved. The last few weeks didn’t really reflect how positive the season has felt overall, but today we managed to put that right together. We’d lost three games in a row, and we talked back in the summer about how that kind of thing could happen. We remained completely calm here. It always felt right, and we’ve grown into a Bundesliga team. Development isn’t always linear, there are setbacks, but the way this club has come on as a unit is outstanding. Merlin and the coaching staff deserve huge credit for that. You could see again today, with the game plan, that we have such an outstanding coach, someone who not only knows the club inside out but is also currently doing an excellent job with the team. We’ve got two games left now and want to get as much out of them as we can. Of course, we’re hoping we might secure survival as early as tomorrow. That is a possibility now. Regardless of other results, though, we’ll be back at it with full focus at the start of the week.

“We never had any doubt we could get a result here”

Merlin Polzin: It’s a very special moment today to pick up such important points as these, having spent seven years in the second division. As a coach, I’m very pleased with both the performance and the result. We never had any doubt that we could get a result here. If you only defend against Frankfurt, it becomes very difficult. That’s why we wanted to use our positional play and rotations to create chances, and we were determined to keep hold of the ball. With Miro Muheim and William Mikelbrencis unavailable, we needed to find a solution that suited our style of play. That’s how the idea of using Albert Grønbæk came about, and he did his job really well.

We’re delighted because all the work we’ve put in on the training ground over the past weeks and months is paying off. These are the moments when you stand in front of the fans and see how happy the lads are. Everyone has their own challenges, but they all put HSV above anything else. Now we want to prepare properly so that, as a promoted side, we can give our fans a great final home game.

Albert Riera: We’re disappointed – both with the result and the performance. It simply wasn’t good enough. We lacked energy in the first half. In the second half, it’s not acceptable that we stopped playing forward despite being in the lead. HSV showed us how to do it – after their equaliser, they went straight for the next goal. We had chances to win the game but weren’t clinical enough.