Sebastian Hoeneß: “We walk out with our heads held high”

Stuttgart’s coach isn’t dissatisfied with his team’s effort in Istanbul.

VfB Stuttgart fell into back-to-back defeats in Europa League, but coach Sebastian Hoeneß opted to cling into the positives in his post-match press conference. Fenerbahçe scored the only goal of the match from a penalty-kick by Kerem Aktürkoğlu.

“I think we can walk out of the stadium with our heads held high,” said Hoeneß. “We played bravely, which was exactly as we wanted to play. But, you can feel the disappointment is definitely there after the result.

“I think we have few points in the Europa League, especially with two defeats. But we are only on the third matchday, and we will hopefully be settled at the end. We will make the most of this situation to continue to work and move forward. We still have all the chances to change the situation.”

Stuttgart’s goalkeeper Alexander Nübel also stressed about the lack of clear-cut chances considering their superiority in possession numbers. “It was mostly a decent game from us,” said the Bayern loanee.

“But, we didn’t create enough dangerous chances on goal. We need to regenerate quickly to continue our Bundesliga streak against Mainz.”

Angelo Stiller was the player who was penalized for the foul on Milan Škriniar inside the box which led to the only goal of the game. “I haven’t seen the penalty incident on screen yet. So, I can’t say much about it. It was a close game. Ultimately, it’s a shame we didn’t take a point.” said the central midfielder.