"We didn’t deserve it"

In the final seconds of the game, even Sven Ulreich was up in the opposing penalty area, but it just wasn’t to be. HSV lost the penultimate game of the season and have thereby missed out on the chance at promotion. As the full-time whistle blew, the Rothosen sank to the floor and grieved individually for a while. In the other half of the pitch, the VfL Osnabrück players celebrated – after 13 consecutive defeats at home they were able to get a win at Bremer Brücke again. Furthermore, they avoided relegation for this week at least and could even avoid it completely next weekend, with the lifeline of a playoff still a possible outcome. Match reaction below.  

Horst Hrubesch: It hurts. But it has to be said: We just didn’t deserve it! I think when you’re in a game like this you just have to give more. We didn’t do that. As I said: You have to earn something like this. It’s regretful, because we had the chance again but couldn’t take it. At the end of the day we have to ask ourselves why that is. 

We are capable of playing good football, as we saw against Nürnberg. We’re also capable of defending well, but we leave gaps and concede goals where you really have to question things. We practically scored these goals ourselves. Then in the closing stags we finally get back into the game at 2-2, but then you actually have to want to win it. I didn’t get the feeling we wanted this game like you need to from the start. We knew what we were up against, 

"The 90 minutes today were symbolic of the whole season"

Jonas Boldt: We’re very disappointed after this game. We believed in our chances until the end, but the 90 minutes today were symbolic of the whole season: We created a lot of opportunities but we gave away too many goals and on the whole we dropped far too many points against teams in the bottom half of the table.

Maybe we didn’t really fight enough in these games either, that’s the conclusion you have to draw when you look at the away games in Sandhausen, in Würzburg and here today. This needs to be analysed. For a long time, we were making really promising progress, we picked up a lot of points against the other teams at the top and we were on the right tracks. We lost ourselves a little on the way. Maybe we too things for granted, but things need to be worked hard for. In the end it didn’t work out, despite our high expectations, so we are very disappointed.