On Sunday evening, World Champion Christoph Kramer did for BVB what Dortmund’s high-quality team could not. The Germany international scored an own-goal from nearly 45 metres after attempting a peculiar pass back to his own goalkeeper that gave Borussia Dortmund a 1-0 win over his side Borussia Mönchengladbach. But that wasn’t his biggest problem after the game, as the 23-year-old explained in his honest interview with DFB.de.
Question: Mr. Kramer, can you describe the situation leading up to your own-goal that ended up being the only goal of the game please?
Christoph Kramer: The ball was played to me and I didn’t have many options. That’s why I didn’t want it, but I hit it first time. The ball bounced a bit and therefore I wanted to play it back through a relatively big gap quite low to the ground. But I didn’t do that. The ball didn’t bounce again and I got my foot so far under the ball that it went high and into the goal. It shouldn’t have happened, but these things can happen- I’m only human. But what also shouldn’t have happened was what occurred over the 90 minutes. That was quite lousy!
Question: How were you feeling when the ball left your foot?
Kramer: Not good. When the ball left my foot, I thought: Oh no! And when I saw that Yann (Sommer) was so far out, I thought: Oh no again!
Question: Was that your first own-goal of your career?
Kramer: Mmh, yes. I spoke to a friend on the phone the day before yesterday and said: I’ll never score an own-goal…but also: Something like that happens to everyone once and it’s not the end of the world. The fact that I played so badly for 90 minutes is the end of the world. I have to apologise for that and I’m doing that exactly now. And with that, the matter has been settled.
Question: Ex-Germany international Sebastian Kehl consoled you straight after the own-goal. What did he say?
Kramer: What should he have said? “Keep your head up” but that doesn’t matter.
Question: Gladbach’s 18 game unbeaten run has come to an end with the 1-0 loss.
Kramer: I would have gladly done it differently. Everyone knows how unlucky it is when the ball leaves your foot and you see it go in. But I’m not going to linger on the goal. We didn’t play well for most of the game and neither did I.
Question: At the end of the game, the statistics favoured BVB with 22-1 shots, 7-0 corners and 58% of tackles won. Were you surprised that Dortmund pressed you so much?
Kramer: How do you define surprised? We knew that they would do that as much as possible. But that’s doesn’t mean we didn’t have a game plan or anything like that. Dortmund did that unbelievably well and we reacted badly. I haven’t made so many poor passes as I did in the first half. If there’s a player in the middle of the park, who usually makes almost all his passes but in this game missed nearly every one, then you can come up with a game plan. I will get a lot of praise, but you can criticise me now.
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On Sunday evening, World Champion Christoph Kramer did for BVB what Dortmund’s high-quality team could not. The Germany international scored an own-goal from nearly 45 metres after attempting a peculiar pass back to his own goalkeeper that gave Borussia Dortmund a 1-0 win over his side Borussia Mönchengladbach. But that wasn’t his biggest problem after the game, as the 23-year-old explained in his honest interview with DFB.de.
Question: Mr. Kramer, can you describe the situation leading up to your own-goal that ended up being the only goal of the game please?
Christoph Kramer: The ball was played to me and I didn’t have many options. That’s why I didn’t want it, but I hit it first time. The ball bounced a bit and therefore I wanted to play it back through a relatively big gap quite low to the ground. But I didn’t do that. The ball didn’t bounce again and I got my foot so far under the ball that it went high and into the goal. It shouldn’t have happened, but these things can happen- I’m only human. But what also shouldn’t have happened was what occurred over the 90 minutes. That was quite lousy!
Question: How were you feeling when the ball left your foot?
Kramer: Not good. When the ball left my foot, I thought: Oh no! And when I saw that Yann (Sommer) was so far out, I thought: Oh no again!
Question: Was that your first own-goal of your career?
Kramer: Mmh, yes. I spoke to a friend on the phone the day before yesterday and said: I’ll never score an own-goal…but also: Something like that happens to everyone once and it’s not the end of the world. The fact that I played so badly for 90 minutes is the end of the world. I have to apologise for that and I’m doing that exactly now. And with that, the matter has been settled.
Question: Ex-Germany international Sebastian Kehl consoled you straight after the own-goal. What did he say?
Kramer: What should he have said? “Keep your head up” but that doesn’t matter.
Question: Gladbach’s 18 game unbeaten run has come to an end with the 1-0 loss.
Kramer: I would have gladly done it differently. Everyone knows how unlucky it is when the ball leaves your foot and you see it go in. But I’m not going to linger on the goal. We didn’t play well for most of the game and neither did I.
Question: At the end of the game, the statistics favoured BVB with 22-1 shots, 7-0 corners and 58% of tackles won. Were you surprised that Dortmund pressed you so much?
Kramer: How do you define surprised? We knew that they would do that as much as possible. But that’s doesn’t mean we didn’t have a game plan or anything like that. Dortmund did that unbelievably well and we reacted badly. I haven’t made so many poor passes as I did in the first half. If there’s a player in the middle of the park, who usually makes almost all his passes but in this game missed nearly every one, then you can come up with a game plan. I will get a lot of praise, but you can criticise me now.
