FCK suffer 2-1 defeat to Heidenheim - reaction

F.C. Copenhagen suffered a 2-1 defeat to German side Heidenheim in the first leg of their UEFA Conference League playoff on Thursday.

The Lions took the lead through Jordan Larsson in first-half stoppage time but goals from Thomas Keller and Tim Siersleben turned the tie after the break.

"We are of course disappointed that we didn't get a better result, but even though we are one goal behind, I still believe that we have a fair chance of winning in Germany," said Jacob Neestrup after the match.

"I think we delivered a really good first half today, and even though we may not have had as many open chances, I am disappointed that we didn't get more out of the many good attacks we created.

"We also started the second half well, but once they equalised we started to lose some structure and some balance.

"We made some changes that we had to make, but we ended up with a team that lacked minutes playing together, because we had some players out there who have not been part of the team much this winter.

"Of course we need to be a little smarter and should have taken our time a little more with the ball, because we got hit in the last 20 minutes, which you can do as a Danish team when you haven't played for two months and face a German side that is still playing matches every week.

"There's a difference between training matches and competitive matches, and I admit that we couldn't keep the balance better to protect ourselves. Both to give ourselves the opportunity to score again or at least keep it to 1-1.

"But as I said, I still think we have a fair chance of progressing. We're not throwing in the towel, but going there to win. We showed that there are definitely possibilities, and we hopefully also have a few players who came on the field today who, with a little more training time and a little more minutes on Monday, will be a few percent sharper."