Jonas Meffert: "You don't sit in the dressing room cheering at half-time".

Jonas Meffert was lucky after the match against Hertha BSC. Because the midfielder had to take a doping test after the 90 minutes in the Olympic Stadium, he missed the departure of the team bus. However, since the bus is much slower than the team management's car, which took him instead, he was finally in bed at home even earlier than his teammates. "It was still a tiring drive back," Meffert explained to journalists in a media roundtable the day after. The strong-runner certainly does not want to use the 1:0 away win to rest. On the contrary: Meffert knows how quickly a 1-0 win in the first of the two relegation matches can be used up. Last season, Meffert won the first encounter with Holstein Kiel against 1. FC Köln, only to suffer a clear 1:5 defeat in the second match. "You can't compare the two situations," but Meffert draws no parallels. "We were very lucky to win against Cologne back then. They are completely different scenarios. Yesterday we were very brave in the second half and deserved to win. But we are not finished yet. That's how we want to perform in the second game," said the 27-year-old.  

In the media round he also spoke about ...

... the course of the game: "It was a very intense game. Hertha also put everything into it. It was very competitive. They are still the Bundesliga team and the clear favourites. I think we fought back very well, maybe we needed a bit to get into it, we weren't too brave at the beginning, as the coach would have liked, but in the second half we played it more bravely. 

... the morale during the game: That's a bit complicated. Because there are always two games. If you're 1-0 down in the first game, you normally want everyone to run forward to get the equaliser. But in this case it's two games. The relegation matches have a special constellation. That's why the Hertha players were perhaps a bit more unsorted, because one runs forward and one does not. Maybe we could have made better use of it. But it was a very good result for us. 

... the joy after the first leg win: You can compare it to the last game of the season against Hansa Rostock. We were happy, but even then we knew it wasn't over yet. It's like half-time. And at half-time you don't sit in the dressing room and cheer. 

... the fans: Yesterday it felt like a home game. It was unbelievable how the fans supported us. We're all looking forward to the return match. We know what the atmosphere was like against Freiburg or Hannover in front of a sell-out crowd. We're all really up for it, to achieve the best possible result with this energy they're giving us.