"We all believed we could get a win!"

An equaliser five minutes before full time, then a brilliant finish to take the lead just three minutes later, Hertha’s 2-1 win over Schalke could hardly have been more of an emotional rollercoaster. The Hertha players were correspondingly happy when speaking about their first three points at home in front of 60,165 fans at the Olympiastadion. “It was the perfect moment, and hopefully not the last time that I am able to celebrate a goal like this. As a team, we stayed in the game after the equaliser, the fans kept supporting us and we all believed we could get a win,” said Wilfried Kanga after scoring the winner and his first Bundesliga goal. herthabsc.com has the immediate reaction.

Jean-Paul Boëtius: This season we have almost got there so many times – now we have finally been rewarded with the three points! We are obviously unbelievably happy about it. It was not an easy game, on some occasions we were not alert enough with second balls. All in all, we could still have controlled the game a bit better. Personally, I feel really good and hope that I can get even more minutes in the next game to get my rhythm back.

Oliver Christensen: The fans in the kurve said to us that they have a lot of faith in us. We are happy that we were finally able to give them a first home win. In the last ten minutes before their goal we were a bit too deep and made a couple of errors. But we have played better before and ended up with a draw, this time we got the three points, sometimes that’s football. After the equaliser we were all thinking, “Not another draw!” But we found the energy to score the second goal. I am really pleased for Willy [Wilfried Kanga], it was a great moment.

Marc Kempf: In the first half we have a couple of problems because we were surprised by the way they set up. We had two slices of luck with the offside goals. But we stayed in the game, even after the equaliser, and in the end it was a deserved win. That Wilfried Kanga scored his first goal in such an important moment in the season was unbelievably important for us. The last few weeks have not been easy for him, so it is even nicer than it was him who got us the three points.

Wilfried Kanga: It was the perfect moment, and hopefully not the last time that I am able to celebrate a goal like this. As a team, we stayed in the game after the equaliser, the fans kept supporting us and we all believed we could get a win. Also for me personally after having a few chances before always kept going, and I was rewarded for that. It is a very important win that was unbelievably important for us.

Marvin Plattenhardt: We have been so close in the last few weeks but have always somehow missed out on getting that home win. Now it was finally the time and it feels really nice. luckily we got it over the line at the end. It is obviously a great story that Willy [Wilfried Kanga] was finally rewarded for his hard work. We knew that Schalke had their backs against the wall slightly and as a result they would really fight in every challenge. They made it very difficult for us, and at the same time we weren’t clean enough when playing forward. But we definitely wanted to win and we stayed calm after the late equaliser, which makes the win all the more pleasing. At the end you could see how emotionally we all reacted.

Suat Serdar: Schalke started really aggressively, which possibly surprised us slightly, even though the coach had warned us of this. In the last few weeks we had regularly been unlucky, this time we had a bit of luck on our side. The whole team is really pleased for Willy [Wilfried Kanga] that he scored the winning goal. He has finally been rewarded for his hard work and he can keep going like this. Even if all in all we could have played better, we still managed to get three points in the end. A win like this will give the team a lift.