Hecking: 'That was a really awesome match'
Cologne - The final englische Woche of the calendar year proved to be a nerve-wracking one for the Bundesliga's coaches, as the men in the dugouts did their best to spur their charges to victory in the penultimate round of games before the winter break.
Borussia Dortmund 2-2 VfL Wolfsburg
bundesliga.com finds out what some of the top flight's tacticians made of their respective teams' performances on Matchday 16...
Jürgen Klopp (Dortmund): "That was a full-blooded match against a very good opponent. Wolfsburg are bang in form at the moment and have enormous quality. We created some good chances but Wolfsburg deserved a point in the end, even though it's disappointing that both their goals came from set-pieces. We played well on the whole and our performance gives us something to build on."
Dieter Hecking (Wolfsburg): "Neither team could have played much better than they did today. It was a really awesome match. We knew before the game that Dortmund would give everything to try and win their last home game of the year. We created good chances and Borussia might have become a bit anxious if we had made it 2-1 after half-time. We made a mistake which led to BVB's second goal, but we fought back and that's why we're satisfied with the result."
TSG 1899 Hoffenheim 0-1 Bayer 04 Leverkusen
Markus Gisdol (Hoffenheim): "Leverkusen won the match during a 15-minute period in the second half when they upped the pressure on us. Unfortunately, we weren't able to score after creating some good chances.Roger Schmidt (Leverkusen): "If you work hard you get your reward - that proved to be the case today. There's been a lot of focus on Stefan Kießling this week, so I'm particularly pleased that he managed to score."
SC Paderborn 07 1-2 FC Schalke 04
Andre Breitenreiter (Paderborn): "We didn't get the result we deserved after a really strong performance. We were exceptional in the first half and barely gave Schalke room to breathe. At the end of the day we did well against an outstanding side and showed we weren't far off taking points off them."Roberto Di Matteo (Schalke): "We deserved the victory based on our second-half performance. We were lucky to go into half-time level at 1-1, but the conditions weren't great. Our battling qualities earned us the win."
FC Bayern München 2-0 SC Freiburg
Pep Guardiola (Bayern): "Freiburg played very well defensively, but we have good attacking players like [Arjen] Robben, [Thomas] Müller, [Robert] Lewandowski and [Franck] Ribery. Huge compliments to those players - Freiburg didn't give us a lot of space in attack."Christian Streich (Freiburg): "We started quite well. We had to play defensively today and tried to reduce the space in between the lines, which we did well on the whole. Certain situations are impossible to defend against, though. The fact that we only lost 2-0 gives us confidence."
Hamburger SV 0-1 VfB Stuttgart
Josef Zinnbauer (Hamburg): "We've been lacking that cutting edge in the box for a number of weeks now, and that was what was missing again today. Inexplicably, we lost our way after making a good start to the match. In the second half there wasn't enough movement on our part and we lacked ideas against our deep-lying opponents. You have to be more creative against ten men and put more pressure on the opposition's goal."Huub Stevens (Stuttgart): "These three points are very important. We could have been 2-0 or 3-0 up by half-time, but when you go down to ten men the only thing that counts is holding on to the victory. My boys fought brilliantly, so great credit to them for that."
1. FC Köln 0-0 1. FSV Mainz 05
Peter Stöger (Köln): "It was clear that we wanted to win the match. The lads put the opposition under pressure and gave everything. We've lost our last couple of home games after conceding late goals, so bearing that in mind we're quite happy with the point."Kasper Hjulmand (Mainz): "We didn't play as well as we can today. Both teams defended well and there weren't many chances, so a point apiece was a fair result. We'll definitely have to play better on Friday [against FC Bayern] than we did today."
