FC St. Pauli

Fabian Hürzeler on…

...the return from suspension of Karol Mets: “No player is seeded. I’m a fan of healthy competition for places and we definitely have that in the squad. I know what I have in Karol. He’s on the players’ committee because he’s a leader, simple as that. He’s vocal and leads the way with his style. He’s made tremendous progress in recent months – not only as a player but as a person, too. In Adam Dźwigała and David Nemeth, we have two more excellent centre-backs. We saw how good David is against Magdeburg, and Adam has always shown what he can do. I’m super happy to have all three.”

...the goal drought: “If you keep mentioning things, you put too much emphasis on them and they’re on your mind even more. I want my players to be unencumbered and free in their decision-making. They shouldn’t be too tense in front of goal. For us, that means we have to keep going, keep working hard and instead of feeling sorry for ourselves stick to our belief and stay relaxed. If we do that, I’m convinced the goals will come. We can’t simply say the ball will go in eventually. We have to earn the luck we had at times in the second half of last season.”

...solutions for better finishing: “We do a lot of work with video footage, benchmark scenes are a help. How do the best teams do things? It’s something for our players to go by. You start seeing details you can do differently. It’s learning for the players. We trying to get them watching these scenes themselves over and over again and analysing what they can do better.”

...his team’s excellent defensive performances: “Defensive stability will always be the foundation for me. We’ve taken it upon ourselves to make this the key to success. The lads are doing a great job. It isn’t only the defenders who are ensuring we’re keeping clean sheets, it’s down to everyone and that includes the attacking players, who are my first line of defence. We’ll keep focusing on maintaining our defensive shape.”

...opponents Eintracht Braunschweig: “They’re very solid at the back and have players who switch the play very well. In Anthony Ujah, they have a super striker up front who holds the ball up well, gets in behind the defence and is a constant threat. In Anton Donkor und Jan-Hendrik Marx, they have two incredibly fast players on the flanks who are quick to get crosses in and like to get to the byeline. In general, they’re very good at getting players in the box and are always good for a goal. They play a lot of vertical balls that can be awkward at times, so we’ll have to prepare well. In performance terms, we hope to carry on where we’ve left off recently so we can get a win at Braunschweig.”

Photos: Witters