Mr. Heidel, what are your expectations for the second half of the season - and what are your hopes that go beyond expectations?
I didn't really think about that because this very short winter break is not a great turning point for any of us.
That's why we just want to continue the season as we have done so far, without referring to the result of the game in Frankfurt.
We don't want any big changes, there won't be any changes in the squad.
We want to continue the path we are on now, the way we play football.
After this first half of the season, after which the team is doing better than it has been for a long time, can it be completely ignored to attack the international positions?
With this approach, we have done very well for many, many years and, among other things, have twice qualified for Europe without us having written it on our flags beforehand.
We're in a phase where we can beat any team in the Bundesliga on a good day.
But we can also lose to any team.
(The interview was conducted before the 1: 4 in Leipzig at the start of the second half of the season on Saturday / Editor's note)
Speaking of international business, are you planning to travel to Qatar as a World Cup tourist next winter?
I haven't looked at this World Cup at all.
I used to book the tickets a year in advance when I flew to the games with my buddies.
But Qatar wasn't even an issue for us, sometimes detached from political backgrounds and organizational issues.
With the World Cup in Qatar, I have a stomach ache.
A football World Cup in the desert is similar to the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing.
I have seen these days that there is no snow at all in the Beijing region, but that hundreds of thousands of hectoliters of snow have to be produced and brought into a mountain range in which large areas had previously been cleared. It's a bit scary, but I don't necessarily want to compare it to the World Cup. There are, however, some issues that have to be heavy on the stomach when hosting a World Cup in Qatar, some of which are very pragmatic for football. What I still don't understand today is that FIFA is putting the 2022 World Cup to tender for June / July and that the bid is given to a country where ten minutes after the election you find out that it's really warm there in the summer. And suddenly a World Cup is postponed to winter. I don't know how this choice really came about. But it's completely absurd to methat you apply for the summer and play in the winter. And the entire football world has to change its game plan because of this.
Can such developments in international football be corrected in principle?