Blessin “overjoyed” as St. Pauli finally secure first home win

FC St. Pauli coach Alexander Blessin was a happy man after his side beat Holstein Kiel to take their first home win of the season.

FC St. Pauli picked up three vital Bundesliga points on Friday night, beating relegation rivals Holstein Kiel 3-1 at the Millerntor. 

St Pauli took the lead through Manolis Saliakis and went into the break 1-0 up after Kiel’s Jann-Fiete Arp missed a penalty. 

Goals from Morgan Guilavogui and Johannes Eggestein added to the lead before Phil Harres grabbed a late consolation for the visitors. 

After St. Pauli’s first home win of the season, head coach Alexander Blessin was both pleased and relieved.

“We’re obviously overjoyed. I’m happy not to have to answer any more questions about when we’ll get our first home win at the next few news conferences,” said Blessin in a post-match interview. 

“The momentum was fully on our side when the ball bounced off the inside of the post and went in. We’ve earned ourselves that luck in recent weeks. Huge compliments to the team. We learned from the Mönchengladbach game and have taken a step forward. 

“Apart from the penalty and the consolation strike we kept Kiel a long way from our goal. We varied the height of our defensive line. We stood deeper after the break, sometimes too deep. We wanted to run counterattacks and we got the second goal from one. The goals were magnificent, it was simply a question of the lads getting their reward. Something that annoys me slightly is that we should have done more for the clean sheet given the way Niko performed today. Taken over the 90 minutes we fully deserved to win.”

The win lifted St. Pauli to 15th place with 11 points from 12 games, one more than Heidenheim, who play Eintracht Frankfurt on Sunday.