“This is my responsibility too.”

These are methods that have great quality on paper, but of course they also have to work. Secondly, we will benefit from the fact that many youngsters made their debuts last season. They got used to it, they developed, and that's why there is now a lot of competition in their daily work. That's good for us.

They managed to surprise Serge Philippe Roux Yau in the negotiations. How well do you speak French?

Good enough to be able to talk to everyone. But before the long conversations we had with Serge, I had also done some dictionary research. And then he surprised me too.

How is that?

Since my master was still injured, the first place in the 30-meter race was vacant. Although Ru-Yao is 1.97 meters tall, he was our fastest. By the way, ahead of Furkan Dursun.

Dorson's young talent is often mentioned in a positive light – why?

Because Forkan is a classic nine player – unfortunately, he is rarely trained anymore. His profile is really interesting. That's why I want him to take the next step.

Rapid has been trying to get Belgo for a long time – why was he your dream striker?

I've been dealing with him for years. I really like him as a man: tall, but still technically good, left-footed – which is always uncomfortable for a defender – and a good goal rate when he plays regularly. Beljo is very complete. Burgstaller also has strengths when he has a partner by his side.

Burgstaller did Former striker Maiolo described as 'lazy' in Corriere. do you agree?

Of course, he could have been more diligent. I think with Valle it's a matter of awareness: he doesn't know yet how good he could be if he knew what it means to be a professional and to get the most out of himself.

This is exactly what should be exciting for a coach.

Yes, a lot. We made progress too. Maybe in a year we would have had more for him – no guarantee. But he wanted to go, so we said: 'Only under these conditions'. Bristol achieved that.

You also rate Isak Jansson highly for the new season. Why?

Isak is of particular value to us because he is the best in direct confrontations and also has great speed. He is the only one who can beat the opponent in this way from a standing position. He is also flexible: he can play behind the leaders in the half-space, or right along the line if necessary – or right up front.

What happened during the last international break in April before the decline in performances and the misery of injuries?

It wasn't just bad luck with injuries. We simply weren't good enough sportingly, tactically and in terms of individual player performance in these many qualifiers. We drew many conclusions from this.

Also the idea of ​​hiring a new sports coach, David Lechner?

No, that wouldn't be fair. The many injuries are also my responsibility as head coach. Even after winning the cup, we had signed David simply because he fit better into our idea of ​​what we wanted to coach and how.

When Rapid were still in the European group stage on a regular basis, there were many surprises in the league. Will something like that happen again?

We are now consciously working so that the training is particularly intensive three days before the friendlies against Slavia Prague and Debrecen, and it will also be the same before the Milan game – in order to get used to the pressure of the English week as early as possible. It's all about experience: even with Leipzig we had problems in the group stage of the league in the first year. It was the same with Sturm at the time, this year they played in everything with the best 11 teams.