Wolfsburg celebrated a "deserved win" over Hoffenheim with Max Kruse bagging a hat-trick - © © gettyimages / Hartmann
Wolfsburg celebrated a "deserved win" over Hoffenheim with Max Kruse bagging a hat-trick - © © gettyimages / Hartmann

Draxler: 'We deserved to win'

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Wolfsburg - VfL Wolfsburg got themselves back to winning ways to maintain their impressive home and those involved in the 4-2 victory over TSG 1899 Hoffenheim were obviously delighted.

VfL Wolfsburg

The visitors, meanwhile, we left to rue mistakes that saw them fall behind so early on in the encounter and then fail to hold onto a point after overturning a two-goal deficit. bundesliga.com rounds up the post-match thoughts from both camps...

Dieter Hecking (Wolfsburg head coach): We got ourselves in the game well and from the very first minute we played with great ambition. I would have liked us to be even more clinical in front of goal and make it 3-0. That would have put an early end to proceedings. Then we got a bit careless and let them make it 2-1 which turned it into a completely new game on account of Hoffenheim having a lot of quality up front. The positive thing is that my team managed to find their feet again after the scores were levelled, scored two very nice goals and collected a deserved victory. It was the first step in the right direction.

Max Kruse: "When you're 2-0 up at home then you have to see the job through. It is never the right time to concede an equaliser just after half-time but we saw today that the team was determined to turn the game round. I think we showed a very committed and passionate performance over the 90 minutes."

Julian Draxler: "We got off to a great start, which is what we wanted. It was a bit unfortunate that we were pegged back to 2-2 for a time after leading so early on. But even though Hoffenheim were dangerous at times, we deserved to win in the end."

Vieirinha: "We knew it would be a difficult game so we set out to put them under pressure right from the start. We wanted to score as quickly as possible and the first 15-20 minutes were superb. We were made to suffer a bit but overall we deserved to win."

Bas Dost: "After the two early goals I thought it was going to be a really fantastic match and we'd win four or five nil. But this is the Bundesliga and you come up against teams that also know how to play football. They came back well in the second half but we showed we have the quality and Max Kruse was on hand today!"

TSG 1899 Hoffenheim

Markus Gisdol (Hoffenheim head coach): “It was of course the worst conceivable start. 2-0 down after seven minutes. You can’t present yourself like that in the opening 20 minutes. The team caught themselves and managed to pull a goal back before half-time. Then straight after we switched sides we produced the equaliser. After that I had the feeling we were well in the game. Then we gave Wolfsburg too much room and they played it out well. That was reckless. To come back again after going 3-2 down is very hard. In our situation the results are difficult. We are lagging behind our poor start to the season and need to pick up points. We haven’t managed to do that yet.”

Oliver Baumann: “After 10 minutes it was already 2-0 – that was far too easy and obviously can’t be allowed to happen. Then we played our way into the match and managed to tie the game up at 2-2. Ultimately we once again made everything far too easy for Wolfsburg. Of course they have quality, but with one ball behind the backline and one pass in the middle were enough – then the threatened in front of goal and scored.”

Eugen Polanski: “Obviously we’ve got ask ourselves why we had pretty much gifted them the game after just eight minutes. We trained differently and had discussed doing something else. Then we actually manage to pull it back, score an equaliser and get back into the game. But then we once again manage to give it away. Wolfsburg didn’t play exceptionally well, we’re just defending poorly as a team.”

Sebastian Rudy: “We were asleep at the start of the game and just weren’t present on the pitch. Everyone could see that and against a team like Wolfsburg it can quickly go wrong. Despite that we still got it back to 2-2. Towards the end of the game we played courageously going forward and then got caught out of position once at the back. You might as well forget the next counter that made it 4-2."