Roberto Di Matteo: It was a close game

Roberto Di Matteo:

It was a close game. We were a little better in the opening stages and had a good chance to go in front through Klaas-Jan Huntelaar. We made too many mistakes in our build-up play though and weren’t really able to control proceedings. We had a few goalscoring opportunities, but perhaps we were a little too nervous at times and didn’t make the right decisions. Leverkusen pressed well and made life difficult for us. We’re obviously very disappointed considering the result.

We should have got a penalty in the final few minutes. It was a clear handball from Roberto Hilbert from my point of view. You’ve seen things like the back-pass in the second half given before as well. Things didn’t go our way. 

We still have eight games and we have to pick up as many points as possible. As long as qualifying for the Champions League is possible, we will do all we can to make it happen. We still believe we can do it.

Roger Schmidt:

We’re very happy that we‘ve won this challenging game. The whole team can feel very proud of today’s result. A victory wasn’t a foregone conclusion because Schalke are very strong at home. Both sides had goal scoring opportunities; however, I think that over the 90 minutes, we deserved to win. The fact that the team are able to be so focused after the Champions League exit is fantastic. We’ve proven over the last few weeks that our team has developed and become much stronger. It’s no coincidence that we’re not conceding many goals at the moment. The team has worked hard to develop a solid defence.