Schweinteiger: I was out of breath from celebrating my goal!

Bastian Schweinsteiger scored Germany’s second goal in their 2-0 win over Ukraine after coming on as a substitute. He was brought on in injury time and scored two minutes later, before an energetic celebration where he ran back to the bench.

Following the win, Schweinsteiger discussed how it felt to play his first competitive game since the Manchester derby in March.

It’s just incredible. After all the injuries… something like this happens. I can’t play for 90 or 120 minutes yet but I’m feeling like I can play. I feel really good. I think, if I stay healthy, I’ll be able to play. I hope I can play some more.

I ran so hard in the celebrations that I’m a bit out of breath still! It was amazing for that to happen, it’s the kind of thing you can only wish for, but the most important thing is the team wins.

Joachim Löw sung the praises of Schweinsteiger, although acknowledged that it hadn’t been part of his plans for the midfielder to be so far forward.

I’m very happy for Bastian Schweinsteiger. After all the work he’s done in recent months, he scored the decisive goal. It will help him and the team a lot. It wasn’t really the plan that Bastian was going to surface so far forward. We sent him on to try to calm things down!