Hans Vanaken: "A fantastic victory"

Club did what it had to do, which was to win the first game of the Champions League. "The narrow 1-0 victory took blood, sweat and tears, but the first three points are in and that is the most important thing," captain Hans Vanaken spoke afterwards.

"You can safely call it a fantastic victory," the Bridge number 20 spoke shortly after the final whistle. "So we can say that we started this new Champions League campaign very well. I think we played a very strong first half. We clearly showed then that we can handle such a level and the second half was more survival. We couldn't get out there enough while playing soccer because we were put under pressure almost constantly, but also because we were still sometimes too restless in possession and didn't make enough use of the space that was certainly there."

"In the first half, you clearly saw that Leverkusen is in a lesser period at the moment and you also saw that it didn't run one hundred percent the way they would have liked. I even got the feeling that they were playing a bit wait-and-see and so left a bit more on the ball, which of course was not disadvantageous for us. Then in the second half it was the other way around because of the 1-0 lead for us. They then had to come and then they did do everything they could to get at least a draw. Of course we got a little lucky with their two disallowed goals and that obviously suited us. Our very young goal scorer Abakar Sylla played a very strong game indeed. He is someone who joined the A core last year. We saw immediately that he had something special. He is still very young, of course, but if he keeps his feet on the ground, I think we will be able to see a lot of great things from him." (FDC)