“I’m really pissed”
Coach takes a swing – and counts players publicly
12/23/2024 – 7:51 p.mReading time: 3 min.
Only once in the club’s history did SC Paderborn play a stronger first half of the season than now. Nevertheless, coach Kwasniok is not satisfied. And takes a big swing.
After 15 match days, SC Paderborn was at the top of the 2nd Bundesliga table. After just one more point in the following two games, they are in sixth place at the end of the first half of the season. The gap to a direct promotion place is only one point.
This means that the East Westphalians, who were not counted among the hottest promotion candidates before the season, are completely on target – one would think. Lukas Kwasniok sees things completely differently. At the press conference after the 1-2 defeat against Karlsruher SC, the coach delivered what he described as a “sweeping blow”.
The 43-year-old attacked his own players in public in a way that was unusually harsh for a professional coach. At first, Kwasniok kept it general: “I think that the team and coaching staff are constantly at their limit. They can’t do it anymore. But you just need two to three players if you want to get up.”
Regarding defending the goals conceded against KSC, Kwasniok then ranted: “We can’t manage it because the boys are giving everything but aren’t good enough. That’s a very simple calculation.”
He called for reinforcements from the club management: “If you want more, you have to improve. I simply believe that the team and the coaches cannot work better in this composition. And that annoys you when you stand here in the seventh half of the year and say : ‘Wow, worked to the maximum and this is the result.'”
Kwasniok made it clear: “That’s just not enough for me in the long run. Either something will happen or we’ll have a motivational problem at some point.”
Above all, it is a “quality deficit”. He particularly took aim at his goalkeepers: “You just have to look at the complete failures of the goalkeepers, that’s six to eight points in a half series – a no-go. So you simply have no chance of getting any flower pots. “
Kwasniok recently rotated in goal. In the 1-1 draw in Magdeburg, Pelle Boevink, who was number one at the start of the season but was then replaced by Markus Schubert, was once again between the posts. But only for one game, as he made a mistake that led to the goal being conceded. Against Karlsruhe, Kwasniok relied on Schubert again, but he also made a serious mistake.
Kwasniok now had to vent his frustration about this and addressed his goalkeepers again: “Look: I’ve been there for three and a half years and no one has shown that they can perform here permanently. Of course we have a problem there. Mistakes are forgiven. But We simply make too many. We give away goals to the opponents. That happens, but if you make these mistakes so often, then it’s a quality deficit.
Kwasniok continued: “That’s why I can’t blame them. But if it’s not quite enough for one or the other, then at some point I have to communicate that very clearly to the outside world. And that includes the goalkeeper.”
Kwasniok also had harsh words for the performance of his goalkeepers to ARD: “We simply have misfires, no matter who is in goal. The goalkeeper position is not a developmental position.”
What does he attribute the current situation to after just one point from three games? “Lack of quality. As soon as we’re not at our best as we were against Schalke, we’ll get our asses busted. And if we give it our all, then a lot has to come together for us to somehow get the points.”