Interviewed by ARD journalists after the match, both Julian Brandt and Mats Hummels identified the poor performance in the first half as being the main reason for the Black & Yellows' elimination from the DFB Cup. ''We saw a lot of the ball, but weren't able to create very much with it,'' said Brandt. Hummels, for his part, lamented the ''lack of depth,'' in the side's play.

Lucien Favre: ''The first-half performance was poor. We were lacking tempo in our play. We seemed to be late to every ball and come out worse in every tackle. Getting knocked out is very disappointing for all of us. It's a real shame. We had three or four big chances towards the end and could well have ended up achieving our objective.''

Julian Brandt: ''We didn't play well in the first half, especially not on the attacking side of things. We saw a lot of the ball but weren't able to create very much with it. We have no-one to blame but ourselves. We played it side-to-side too often and weren't direct enough going forward. The Weser Stadium is a hard place to go a goal down. The home fans definitely helped carry their team over the line tonight. We really had to go for it in the second half. Going 3-1 down was hard to take. We can't expect to score five goals every match. We all just seemed to be lacking that extra bit of desire to get on the scoresheet tonight. It's been a disappointing evening for us, but credit has to go to Bremen - they did a good job and managed to close down the space very well.''

Mats Hummels: ''We didn't have enough depth in our play in the first half, which is something we need if we want to find spaces in behind. This made it easy for Werder and, when you add our defensive errors in the build-up to their goals, it meant we gave them the initiative in the match. It was far from a vintage performance from us tonight, but we didn't play all that badly either. We had enough chances to find an equaliser. I thought the result was fair overall. Congratulations to Werder.'' (br)