Humour prevailed at Borussia Mönchengladbach after the bitter 4-1 defeat in the derby in Cologne, which has left VfL stuck in mid-table for the time being – and now directly behind FC.
“The disappointment about this defeat is very big in the club, with the fans and the team, we will still feel that in the next few days “, said Adi Hütter after the game, whose result (1:4) also saw the Foals overtaken in the table by their Rhineland rivals. Yann Sommer was also quite upset. “Losing the derby with 1:4 is very disappointing. I think it was an even game for a long time. We came back with the 1:1. I then felt that we were really in the game and could go one better,” said the Gladbach captain.
Sommer: No reproach for Neuhaus
But then – shortly after Jonas Hofmann’s equaliser – came a momentous misplaced pass from wild card Florian Neuhaus, who played the ball straight into Mark Uth’s foot in front of his own penalty area without need. The latter then ran only two or three steps further before shooting in to make it 2:1 for Cologne.
Sommer did not really blame his team-mate Neuhaus, who – as in Cologne – was not always in the starting eleven: “Unfortunately, mistakes like that just happen, they happen to everyone, they are part of sport. But that threw us off our game a little bit. We have to reproach ourselves today for not playing more consistently after the 1:1, for not getting calm. Cologne was a bit down, you have to take advantage of that, but unfortunately we made a few gifts,” said the keeper. For the 1:3 from Gladbach’s point of view only about 90 seconds after the 1:2, scorer Ondrej Duda also benefited from the fact that Nico Elvedi had previously shot at team-mate Denis Zakaria in his own five-metre area;
“A derby like this is always a setback when you lose it. There’s a lot of emotion and prestige involved. You shouldn’t lose that “, said Sommer.
Hütter: “Can’t apologise for performance”
Hütter did want to put the game and the result into perspective a bit, especially since Borussia had at least kept the game even for long stretches. The Austrian said: “I can’t apologise for our performance – but I can apologise for the result and for the fact that we didn’t manage to turn the game in our favour at 1-1. That’s unbelievably annoying and that’s what we have to blame ourselves for today after this match.
