Briand: 'My celebration was inspired by FIFA 15'
Berlin - Jimmy Briand's goal helped Hannover 96 to a 2-0 win at Hertha Berlin in Friday night's Matchday 11 opener, and it was a memorable one not just because it was his debut strike for his new club.
Hannover 96
bundesliga.com rounds up the post-match thoughts following Matchday 11's curtain-raiser at the Olympiastadion...
Jimmy Briand: I'm very happy because it was an important goal just before half time. After that we controlled the game and we were able to get the win, which was the most important thing. My celebration was from playing FIFA. I was playing with my friend Salif Sane and I said if I scored, I'd celebrate like that.
Christian Schulz: It wasn't an easy game for us as Hertha were sitting back and waiting for us to make mistakes, both with and without the ball. But we held our nerve and carved out our chances. More importantly we took them well. The team have really pulled together of late and tonight we've rewarded ourselves with two goals. We might not be the highest scoring team (laughs), but we're creating good chances and that's the key, providing of course that we convert one or two. The head coach [Tayfun Korkut] has worked on our positioning at the back and it's all coming together now. We're really pleased that [Hiroshi] Kiyotake has reached the level of performance where he can make a big contribution in every game. We're delighted to have Kiyo on our books. We'd love to get back into Europe, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Ron-Robert Zieler: We are so stable at the back right now and have dealt with the criticism levelled at us in the right manner. We've also played some really good football at times this season. We work incredibly hard and have done a really efficient job of closing down the spaces both tonight and in our other wins, but our efforts as a collective unit remain our main strength. It's what we've done so well in the last few weeks. We've got a few players coming back from injury who now have a chance to recharge their batteries a little bit more and then it's back to the grind. This win will do us a lot of good going into the international break.
Hertha Berlin:
Per Ciljan Skjelbred: It's hard to say what's wrong with us right now. We're giving everything we can, but it's just not coming together for us. Today we went into the game with a really good feeling, but conceding the opening goal right before the break was a real blow and from there we never really recovered which isn't a good thing. We've got to sit down together with the team and our head coach [Jos Luhukay] and work out exactly where we went wrong. We've got an extended break now during which we can work on a few of our weaknessses. We know we've got to play better for our fans.
Peter Pekarik: Tonight wasn't fun at all and we're really disapppointed. We've got to keep working hard and make sure we win our next game. It's great to be able to play with the fans behind us, but we can't put on a performance like that. Suffering back-to-back defeats played with our minds and I think we saw that again tonight.
Relive Briand's imaginative celebration below, courtesy of the official Bundesliga YouTube channel:
