‘We still have room to improve'

The personalities at Bayern were not entirely satisfied with a goalless draw in the Ukraine in the Champions League Round of 16 first leg against Shakhtar. “We controlled their counter-attacks well. But you can see we still have room to improve,” commented sporting director Matthias Sammer, who felt the result was “dangerous”. Mario Götze said: “We have a second game, and we’ll need to give it all we’ve got.”

Reaction to Shakhtar v Bayern

Matthias Sammer: “If you’d offered it me beforehand I wouldn’t have been satisfied. After the sending-off I can probably live with it a little better, but I consider it a dangerous result because it only sounds good on the face of it. We controlled their counter-attacks well. But you can see we still have room to improve, and that’s the message. We need to put it behind us now and shift up a gear if we’re to make the next round. It wasn’t bad, but it’s not the real Bayern yet – and that’s where we have to be.”

Pep Guardiola: “We were a man down for a long time, and that obviously makes it very difficult. We controlled the play, but we created very few scoring chances. We have to win the return now, and we’ll do it with our fans behind us.”

Mario Götze: “We’d like to have scored here, it would have been important. We made very, very heavy weather of it in the final third, and all in all we never played our usual game the way we intended to. We have a second game, and we’ll need to give it all we’ve got. The details make the difference in the Champions League.”

Mircea Lucescu (Donetsk coach): “Our first target was not to lose, and the second target was to give ourselves a chance in the return. We have that chance. What I regret is that we didn’t try and play our football after Bayern went a man down.”