Rose wants Leipzig to “draw energy” from painful Atletico defeat

Marco Rose wants his RB Leipzig side to build on the positives from their defeat to Atletico Madrid.

RB Leipzig got off to the perfect start against Atletico Madrid in the Champions League on Thursday, opening the scoring after just four minutes through Benjamin Sesko.

However, Antoine Griezmann leveled the score later in the first half before setting up Jose Maria Gimenez’s late winner to inflict a painful 2-1 defeat on Leipzig.

Speaking after the game, Leipzig coach Marco Rose said his team must move on quickly and build on the positives as they don’t have much time to prepare for Sunday’s away game against St. Pauli in the Bundesliga.

“We play again on Sunday. We don’t have a lot of time to dwell on it,” Rose said.

“I hope we can learn from it, take the positives and draw energy from it.”

Rose added that he wants his team to “regain our confidence through the Bundesliga”, although it’s not ideal that his team have so little time to prepare for another away trip.

“We have about the worst situation you can have on Sunday: we play here at 9 p.m., then we fly home tomorrow and go to Hamburg on Saturday, and then we play again in the evening on Sunday,” Rose said.

“We have to trust the depth of our squad because it’s really good,” he added, hinting at rotation.