Schonlau: “It’s up to all of us now”

All eyes have been on him for weeks, even though he has hardly featured on the pitch this season. All the talk is about HSV captain Sebastian Schonlau, a key player, leader and rock at the back who has missed the majority of the campaign with a persistent calf injury, and his absence has been clearly felt by his club. Since the start of the week, ‘Bascho’ has been back in team training with the Rothosen, who are now under a new group of coaches. Between today’s two training sessions, the 29-year-old told the media that he is delighted that his long period out is now over, and that he can now help the team and hopefully usher in a change of fortunes.

Sebastian Schonlau spoke in detail on...

...his physical condition: I’m fit and my calf is holding up. That’s a great feeling for me. I trained partially in the last few days and did so fully with the team again for the first time today. With regard to the Rostock game, we have to be cautious and wait and see how my calf reacts to the recent workload.

...the changes to the coaching staff: A change of coach is never nice. As a player and a team, you feel like you’re also responsible for it, as you’re also in control. The results in the last few weeks have somewhat disappointed and frustrated us too. The normal assumption in football is that it’s about the coach. Lots of us are disappointed, but we still need to keep going. It’s up to all of us now. We’ve got something to make up for since we weren’t pleased with our own performances in the first place. We expect to do better.

“Merlin is a very good coach, who is very knowledgeable and shows lots of commitment.” 

…adaptations in their own game: We want to keep playing dominant football. We feel comfortable doing that. However, we’ve conceded far too many goals in the last two home games. Therefore, we’re focused on our defensive organisation. We’ll take a look at what we can change and where we can make ourselves feel more secure.

...Merlin Polzin’s role: He’s in the thick of things, understands what his role is and knows about our issues. In my opinion, he’s a very good coach, who is very knowledgeable and shows lots of commitment. He’s currently placing more focus on the defensive side of things. In this regard, we’ve done some different drills in training, which are aimed at that and we hadn’t seen before. At the same time, we’ve also said that we don’t want to make a complete u-turn. Merlin is fully convinced by our style of football. We will adjust some things, but it’s not going to be anything crazy.