Post match report

"We have to come back sharper"

The day after HSV’s tough home defeat to SV Darmstadt 98, head coach Hannes Wolf spoke about the team’s mistakes, the development of the match and the next steps to take.

At the full-time whistle on Saturday, the disappointment and disbelief was clear to see on the faces of the HSV players. Wolf’s men signalled their intentions to take the momentum from the derby victory into Saturday’s game and show the same intensity as in the 4-0 win. The start of the game went as planned. Die Rothosen raced into an early lead through Bakery Jatta in the fifth minute before Pierre-Michel Lasogga doubled the home side’s tally eleven minutes later. However, a second half Darmstadt fight back was capped with an injury time winner which saw the visitors go home with all three points. It was a particularly painful loss for everyone involved with the club, not only because of a wasted 2-0 lead but also a missed chance to increase the lead over third-placed Union Berlin to six points.

On Sunday afternoon, Hannes Wolf spoke to the media about…

Bakery Jatta’s goal gave HSV an early lead before Darmstadt staged a second half comeback

… the loss against Darmstadt: We started the game with the right attitude and came into the game well – our initial performance was very strong out of the blocks. After 20 minutes we lost a bit of our sharpness and became more passive. We gave away possession too easily. They scored with their first chance of the second half; we shouldn’t have let that happen. Neither the defence nor the goalkeeper expected the long ball to be so dangerous. That goal opened up the game and we didn’t make the most of our own chances throughout the rest of the game. At our end of the pitch, Darmstadt had three efforts from outside the area, two of which went in and one hit the post – it is very frustrating and tough to take.

… the improvement up front: In the games against Fürth and Dresden we struggled a lot to create chances, but against Darmstadt we played well going forward and managed to create a number of chances in the opposition area. The problem was that we didn’t take them. It is frustrating to have not scored between the 17th minute and the end of the game. The good thing is that we played our best attacking football of the season against St. Pauli and Darmstadt – within 106 minutes we scored six goals.

… the drop in performance after the 20th minute: In every game there are moments where you’re on the back foot. On Saturday we allowed that to happen too much. We have to accept that now because we can’t change it. But we have to learn from it and use the international break to work on it, and come back sharper in the coming weeks. We have to learn not to sit back after a good opening period, but keep our foot on the gas and maintain our performance for the whole 90 minutes. I would have liked to have seen that on Saturday, but now it is just something we need to implement into our game.

… the next steps: We will analyse the plays we did well against Darmstadt and train hard from Tuesday to Friday. From Saturday to Monday, the guys will stay home and the following Tuesday the others will return from their international teams, and we will start the preparations for Bochum. It is a game that will be very tight, just like all the others. Despite Saturday’s result, we are still in charge of our own destiny. None of us want another situation like Saturday’s – we can’t let that happen to us again.