Schubert proud of Gladbach efforts

Borussia Monchengladbach coach Andre Schubert praised the work rate of his side following their 1-1 Champions League draw with Juventus, highlighting his team’s impressive run of form.

Gladbach have lost just one of their previous 10 matches and opened the scoring at Borussia Park on 18 minutes through Fabian Johnson before being pegged back on the stroke of half-time by Stephan Lichtsteiner.

Hernanes was dismissed for a dangerous tackle following the interval and Schubert was proud after his team picked up only their second point in a Group D high on quality.

“At the very beginning, before I miss the chance, I want to make a giant compliment to my team,” he said.

“When we remember what a stretch of games they had bearing in mind the intensity and quality of those games, it is a sign of pure effort and will and a lot quality.

“In the match today I think we showed that we wanted to win it from the first whistle. We tried to attack very early, tried to play good football beginning from the defence against a very good Juventus team. We were successful with that.

“We had 60 per cent possession in the first half [and] even more – of course because of the red card – in the second half and [we] had three or four chances to score. [We] made our goal in the first half but conceded just before half-time.”

Schubert felt his side tried their best to break down Juve’s resilient back-line but admitted they had found creating openings hard to come by.

“Nevertheless we tried to continue our game after the break, after the sending off we were very dominant and tried to find holes in the coverage but Juve defended extremely well,” he said.

“How they defend around their own box, extremely competitive in the air, [it was] very tough. So it was hard to find any holes, we aren’t really a team which is good in the air so crosses or kick and rush does not really work for us.”