VfL Bochum: Without four in Leipzig – this is how Letsch approaches his premiere

There are easier tasks than starting his debut as Bundesliga manager at RB Leipzig. Thomas Letsch has with the VfL Bochum saturday exactly this match in front of the chest. Leipzig also didn’t start the season as well as they would have liked, but have seven points from three home games. We spoke to Letsch ahead of his debut as VfL coach.

Thomas Letsch, what are your impressions of the team after a few days?

First of all, I’m happy that I was able to work with the team after the press conference and the meetings and that things moved forward. The team makes a very good impression. She is open and willing to embrace the things we do in training. We have almost no injuries, which is also very positive. But we also don’t have to pack too much during the first week, it’s about focusing on the basics. I really liked him in training, what matters is how we take him on the pitch in Leipzig.

You said it takes time to develop the team. But what can be achieved or changed in the short term?

The important thing is that I have seen a lot of things that I want to build on. I’m not starting from scratch here. A lot of good work has been done here in recent years. I would like to put my ideas on this work, not everything is turned upside down here. Consequently, these were the first steps. We focused on compactness and playing against the ball, less on playing with the ball, especially in Leipzig we won’t have much ball possession.

How are you planning the next few weeks?

It’s not about closing the gap in the next three meetings. We want to get there gradually, we don’t want the gap to widen.

There has been no public training in the last few days. Who knows more: you from RB Leipzig or your friend Marco Rose as coach at RB from VfL Bochum?

There are many opportunities to get information in this area. It has to be said that the quality of RB Leipzig is extremely high. They have, in my opinion, the second highest individual quality in Germany after Bayern Munich. In the end it doesn’t matter what we know about each other.

We come to the staff. Who is definitely not available?

Takuma Asano is out, as are Paul Grave and Dominique Heintz. Konstantinos Stafylidis trained with the team for the first time on Thursday, so the competition is still too early, the rest are fit. cb/gp