Question: Are you surprised that your team failed to show the necessary aggression in the derby?
Horn: Of course. Derbies are always more emotional and we knew that a portion of our fans would not attend the game today, so that wasn’t what caused our problems. The guys even came out on Friday and wished us luck. There is no explanation for what happened today. We have to make sure it doesn’t happen in the upcoming weeks and show a different kind of attitude.
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Timo Horn was clearly disappointed after the four-time Germany U21 international goalkeeper suffered a 1-0 derby defeat in Gladbach despite a solid performance. Horn had kept his team 1. FC Köln in the game with several strong saves but in the end was unable to prevent the loss.
In this interview with DFB.de the 22-year-old talks about the reasons for this defeat, the mistakes made before Gladbach’s decisive goal and what has to improve before Köln’s next games.
Question: Timo Horn, what are the reasons for the 1-0 derby defeat to Borussia Mönchengladbach?
Timo Horn: Our commitment, which had been good in previous weeks, was not visible in the first half. Gladbach invested a lot in order to win this game. They were aggressive in challenges and wanted to win this derby more than we did. We lost the game by playing the way we did. It’s unusual for us, since we had planned to show a different attitude. It was not good enough for a derby.
Question: Köln’s performance improved after half-time. What did you address during the break?
Horn: Obviously our coach told us, that if we continue playing like we are, we would lose this derby. Therefore we started to play better defensively in the second half, but at the end of the day we didn’t do enough to earn a result. Milos Jojic had an impact on our game after he was brought on and looked to get attempts on goal on the wet pitch. It was a good impulse, but ultimately not enough in order to give Gladbach real problems.
Question: It felt as if Köln’s timing was off today, not just when you conceded the goal. Why was that?
Horn: We knew that if we allowed Gladbach to any room at all, that they have technically skilled players to take advantage of that. Raffael was given too much time on the ball before they scored, allowing him to look up and play the ball into the centre. Mahmoud Dahoud was then able to pick his target without much pressure on him. We have to be closer to our opponents, which is something our coach addressed to us before this game. Otherwise Gladbach are always capable of scoring a goal. Nonetheless we already showed in previous weeks that we can turn games around. Today we lacked the ability to push each other onwards and we weren’t able to stage a comeback.
Question: Are you surprised that your team failed to show the necessary aggression in the derby?
Horn: Of course. Derbies are always more emotional and we knew that a portion of our fans would not attend the game today, so that wasn’t what caused our problems. The guys even came out on Friday and wished us luck. There is no explanation for what happened today. We have to make sure it doesn’t happen in the upcoming weeks and show a different kind of attitude.