"If you go into the relegation battle like that, you’re not going to get anywhere. If we go on like this, I have no more hope. Not even a spark. That’s just pitiful," the former goalkeeper and later president of HSV told the "bild" newspaper after the 4-0 defeat of the 14th-place team in the table..
Seeler had watched the game at home in norderstedt on television – stunned. "All the other rivals in the relegation battle are running, fighting. And we?" Asked the 75-year-old.
In sinsheim the perplexity was hardly less. "We must forget this game quickly. But we must not quickly forget how we played. On saturday against hannover we have the next final game. We need to see a completely different team," demanded sporting director frank arnesen in a hushed voice.
After the fifth defeat in the last seven games, HSV is only two points away from the relegation zone. After the northern derby, it’s off to nurnberg, then against mainz, and on the last matchday, there could be a very rough nail-biter at FC augsburg for the bundesliga-grundungsmitglied.
Like lambs being led to the slaughter, the players crept through the catacombs of the rhein-neckar-arena after the final whistle. "Only the captain says something," veteran david jarolim explained the silence of the pros. Also mladen petric pressed his lips together and shook his head.
Heiko westermann, however, could only think of a few scathing, repetitive words: "a disaster. To concede four goals away from home is naturally catastrophic for our situation. That is not possible. We have made stupid mistakes, we have made catastrophic mistakes."
This took advantage of jannik vestergaard (17. Minute), sejad salihovic (25./foulefmeter), fabian johnson (51.) and sven schipplock (59.) with their goals to the first home victory of the hoffenheimer in almost half a year. The competitors in the relegation battle had given the hanseatic team a good start with defeats, but they stumbled away in front of 27,000 spectators. "After ten minutes, we stopped playing soccer," said arnesen, giving his pros a job description: "you have to fight, play, concentrate and have an attitude."
Coach thorsten fink will have to come up with something in the next few days to wake up his players. "I can’t say much positive about our team’s play today. We played well for the first ten minutes – and that was it", he complained after the final whistle. "I didn’t see any relegation fight from my team today. We have a thousand bruises, but we didn’t put up much of a fight ourselves. Of course it is not possible."
HSV seemed to have caught itself a bit in the 1:0 at kaiserslautern and the 1:1 against leverkusen. "We don’t have long to dwell on this, we have to look ahead," said fink. "We have to see that we win the next home game, that we show a different mentality than the one we showed today."