However, his players defended Gíslason after the game. Defensive chicken Tom Kiesler said: “It’s obviously annoying. If he doesn’t take the time-out, it’s a goal,” but qualified: “But it probably wasn’t because of the one goal today.” Captain Johannes Golla became even clearer. “Alfred actually decides to take a time-out at a good moment because the arm (of the referee to indicate time play, editor’s note) wasn’t up yet,” he said.
The fact that Knorr was successful in the situation and came to the conclusion was not due to a planned move, but rather to the player’s intuition. “Now it was unfortunate, but my God, it happens,” Golla brushed off the coach’s mistake. “We’re not angry with him. He’s also not angry with us if we throw away a loose ball or make a stupid mistake.” Similar to Kiesler, the pivot confirmed: “It just happens and it wasn’t because of the scene today, but we had many situations, or actually the whole game, to do it better. We don’t want to focus too much on one mishap.”
The affected Knorr himself saw it similarly: “That happens,” he said briefly on the ARD microphone and explained that he saw the scene as the low point of a bad second half, in which the German team gave up a four-goal half-time lead. “That was the cherry on the cake,” said Knorr.
