Schalke coach Fred Rutten summed up the share of the points for his side in front of 42,100 spectators at the Weser Stadium: “When you take a point back to Gelsenkirchen from a game as big as Bremen against Schalke, then you have to be satisfied,” said the 45 year old trainer, and he added: “Werder have very, very good footballers within their ranks.”

And those footballers proved the opposing trainer correct in his evaluation of them throughout long periods of the game: “We did many, many things right today and showed just where we are headed,” commented Thomas Schaaf, and general manager Klaus Allofs added: “ It was a game that demanded a lot of running, both teams really had to battle very hard. It’s just a pity that we didn’t get our just rewards.” The point is though that there are now two important points gone a begging: “We just didn’t manage to close the deal and we cost ourselves the reward for our efforts,” commented Schaaf.

“We really battled and gave our all but we just couldn’t get the decisive goal,” noted a somewhat disappointed Sebastian Boenisch having seen too many chances go unused. Torsten Frings hit the nail on the head stating: “The breaking point for us was that we didn’t make use of the countless openings that we had. In spite of the strength of the Schalke defence, we still managed to get free on goal three or four times. That’s when we should have decided the match in our favour. We were the better team and controlled Schalke,” said Frings - a fact that will have the fans feeling positive about the challenges to come.”