“A very good day for us”

RB LEIPZIG 1-2 MAINZ 05

Niko Bungert: “That was a commanding performance from start to finish. You can see that Leipzig have incredible quality individually. We countered this by staying solid and limited their effectiveness. If you let them turn, their wingers have immense quality and it can get pretty nasty. That makes me all the more proud of how we played today. We didn’t let going behind get us down. The penalty was perhaps a bit lucky, but we’ve had similar situations where we’ve been the ones to concede. It was a well-deserved victory and a very good day for us. We need to fully examine Benedict Hollerbach’s injury before we rush into anything. That was certainly a shock 12 minutes in, but the team handled it well today.”

Stefan Bell: “Today was exactly what you would want coming to Leipzig to play in an anniversary game. It’s not often you get the chance to win a game like this. I’m so happy. Of course, it’s a real shame to have lost Benedict Hollerbach so early on. That’s the good and the bad side of football: you win an important game away from home, but also lose an important player in the process. It’s brilliant that we have players like Silas to bring, who, despite a lack of match practice, is getting better and better every week and scored a beautiful goal today. There was nothing we didn’t do well today. We carried out our plan from the start and looked to not sit too deep and to not let any balls in behind us. We did that really well in the first half. We also wanted to prevent their wingers from having enough time on the ball to use their pace. The game was even from the start and we had two huge chances to go in front. We said at half time that we needed to go out and play even more. We had good variation in our game today, especially for the first 70 minutes. We scored our goals at the right time. Leipzig pressed hard for the final 20 minutes, but we were able to defend with everything we had.”

Silas: “I found it tricky to get into the game at first, because the change was unexpected and things had to happen quickly. The team really helped me find my rhythm in the game. The boss said to me before I came on that I needed to help the team defensively and that I was capable of everything going forward. I can’t really remember too many details about my goal. I think the defender gave me too much space, which gave me time to come up with a way to get past them. My fitness is already much better and I’m working really hard on it. All the coaches and my teammates are helping me with it, but I’m not yet at 100%.”