Clinical Werder satisfy Schaaf

Werder Bremen coach Thomas Schaaf was delighted that his side were able to claim a 3-1 win against Udinese Calcio in their UEFA Cup quarter-final first leg despite not outplaying the Serie A side, something he suggested was the opposite of their usual failure to turn chances into goals in this season's competition. It was that very aspect that frustrated his opposite number Pasquale Marino, but the Udinese coach believes they can turn the tie around next Thursday in Italy.

Thomas Schaaf, Bremen coach
We are very happy that we have won this game and that we have scored goals. It is certainly not easy to score three goals against a strong team like Udinese. So today we converted our good perfomances into goals. But even with these three goals it is true that not everything was working out the way we wanted it. We allowed Udinese too many chances, but we were more effective. This was completely different to our earlier matches in the tournament, when it was us who created many chances and did not score enough goals.

Diego showed his class and special quality when he made it 1-0 and even more with his second goal. That was really something special. I also liked the interaction between Mesut Özil and Diego, this was looking very good indeed. Also Hugo Almeida did a good job when he converted his chance to make it 3-0. But it requires eleven players to achieve a good result, so we should not concentrate only on Diego. In the final minutes of the game we lacked concentration, unfortunately. Udinese got more and more chances and finally we conceded this unnecessary goal. This will make the job in Udine next week much more difficult. It will be our task in the second game to concentrate more.

Pasquale Marino, Udinese coach
Unfortunately we showed some naivety when Bremen scored the three goals. My players made important mistakes in these situations. Werder Bremen were very good at converting the few chances they had into goals, so maybe this is not a fair result, because we put on a good performance. We created a lot of chances and Fabio Quagliarella was unlucky not to score more than one goal. But I am happy with the attitude of my players. We never gave up even when three goals down and had six or seven good chances in the second half. Finally we got a goal, but it is only one goal, even in the final minutes we had chances to get a better result.

There are many young players in our squad and the team certainly must improve in the future and learn from matches like this. But there is still hope for the second game, I believe we can make it to the semi-final if we can show the same ability and mentality again. We have nothing to lose and must attack from the beginning. Bremen allowed us some opportunities when we put them under pressure. We have to convert our chances into goals, then a 2-0 [second-leg win] is certainly possible.