BVB coach Marco Rose has come to terms with the Ajax debacle with his eleven. Would it have been better if some players hadn’t played at all?
When the press conference the day before the Champions League match at Ajax Amsterdam had almost become a little too harmonious for him, Marco Rose had used the example of Leverkusen to remind everyone that football moods can quickly change again. “We are measured by results, point, done, out,” the BVB coach had warned. “We have to keep at it.”
What followed was a 0:4 with all that entails. “The criticism that came up was justified, we accept it, we face it,” Rose now stressed on Friday. “We have to put a stop to it now. No one wanted or needed this evening, but it happened. Accordingly, it is now important that we react well, move on, accept the situation. At 8.59 p.m. (on Tuesday, editor’s note) the world still looked different, we were still talking about other things then. “
“Going into duels and not stopping two metres beforehand “
After Wednesday’s free period, Rose sat with his team for “a good hour” on Thursday and tried to “find a good middle ground between working through the content and emotional moments in which you say what was missing”. And that was not exactly little. After the early 0:1, “we completely lost our edge and never got back into the game”.
Rose’s lessons were “that we have to react better to opposition; that we have to remain courageous and still show ourselves, even if the opponent presses very aggressively, intensively; that you also use the situations in which you have the chance to make a statement, to make a statement, and not let yourself be eaten up”. And that you “go into duels and don’t stop two metres beforehand”.
Rose knows: “We have to show a reaction “
He doesn’t want to make excuses, but “a few things around it” also played a role, said Rose: “A few guys went into this game banged up.” Promptly, the personnel situation “got even worse” – because some of them would have been better off not playing at all? When Rose was asked about Dan-Axel Zagadou’s comeback plan on Friday, he warned against “overpacing”, adding: “It might have already fallen on our feet a bit in Amsterdam.”
Will BVB get back on track at Arminia Bielefeld on Saturday without Erling Haaland, Thomas Meunier, Nico Schulz & Co. “We have to show a reaction,” knows Rose, who “doesn’t want to moan around”, but rather “move a bit closer together”. “The boys have already shown this season that they can deal with opposition. “
