Engels pilots humbled Reds to first Qiu Qiu Onlinewin

 New Urawa Reds manager Gert Engels guided the Asian champions to their first win of the season on Sunday, snapping a four-game drought that included two losses in the J.League and a loss and a draw in the league Nabisco Cup.

The Reds defeated Albirex Niigata 3-0 on goals Qiu Qiu Onlinefrom Takahito Soma, Marcus Tulio Tanaka and Yuichiro Nagai on a rainy afternoon at Saitama Stadium.

Afterwards we caught up with Engels, the former assistant manager who was promoted after the firing of fellow German Holger Osieck two games into the 2008 season. Engels said the win meant a significant weight had been lifted from his and his team’s shoulders and added that he hoped the victory would lead to greater things to come this year as the Reds look to regain the league and Emperor’s Cup titles they lost to the Kashima Antlers last year.

 

Q: You must be relieved to have won today …

 

A: Yes that’s the right word, relief. It was very important for us to win here and to win with such a goal difference is even better. 3-0 sounds good, even though it could have ended 3-1 or even 5-2. But I think we got the crowd to support because we tried to play aggressive and go forward and it’s important we do that here at home.

 

Q: It looked like the players were keen to run up the score.

 

A: In the second half we pushed a little too hard. We have to remember that we have a game on Wednesday. There were some situations where we shouldn’t have looked for the fastest way to the goal, we should have kept the ball a little more. satta king There were a few scenes where (Hajime) Hosogai played the ball to Umesaki when he was under pressure. He should have stopped and passed back or tried the other side of the pitch. But I’m happy my players did this, they are young and can recover in the next two days. It’s better than playing too slowly. It was important for our fans that we pushed till the end.

 

Q: You used Tulio as a (defensive) midfielder for the first time. It looked like a stroke of genius in retrospect.

 

A: I think it worked. But everyone knows he’s not the big mover. And we have three games in a row now. We will see. The defense line worked well and Hosogai played 90 minutes with the Olympic team so I really though Tulio could influence the game more from the center of the pitch than from the back.

I know he’s a player who likes to push forward and I thought (as a defender) there would be situations where he pushed forward too much and left us with only two defenders.

As a midfielder he was in a situation where he could push. If he pushed too much, Keita (Suzuki) was there, Hosogai was there and even (captain Nobuhisa) Yamada, who was told to cover in the middle a little bit.

I thought Tulio’s movement was good, and he scored a beautiful goal, which was a very good combination from everybody up front.