Borussia Dortmund boss Thomas Tuchel said his side have "a real desire" to play in the Europa League despite needing a last-gasp winner to beat FC Krasnodar 2-1 at home.
Revitalised Dortmund maintained their 100 percent start to the season struggled to find their best form in front of a 55,200 crowd at the Westfalenstadion, scoring a stoppage-time winner thanks to defender Park Joo-ho.
His header means the Bundesliga leaders have now won all 10 competitive games of their season -- a new club record -- but they did it the hard way after Pavel Mamaev gave the visitors the lead.
BVB had also put in a less than convincing display in their qualifier at Odd last month when they had to come back from three goals down to win 4-3.
Asked after Thursday's win whether the Bundesliga leaders had shown a lack of motivation in the competition, Tuchel replied: "We might have been missing a certain swiftness of action tonight, and our level of alertness in challenges for the ball might not have been quite optimal, but that is under no circumstances down to the fact that we were playing on a Thursday night rather than in the Champions League.
"We have a real desire to play in this competition. We know that it is a long competition and that there are still stages and matches to come which will demand everything from us. But any such accusations would be unfair."
He added: "At the start I felt we were a bit sloppy in terms of the accuracy of some of our passing. There was room for improvement in terms of our precision and body language, and in all aspects of the match we had a lot of difficulties."
Club captain Mats Hummels praised Dortmund's spirit after the last-gasp winner, calling it "a feat that Bayern Munich often manage to pull off."
Tuchel also praised Adnan Januzaj after he completed his first full 90 minutes for Dortmund, saying: "He needs these games in order to get to know how we play.
"Later on tonight we put him through the middle, then put him back on the wing right at the end. He played with great commitment and fluency. He's on the right track."
The attendance for the match, while well short of the Westfalenstadion's 66,000 capacity for UEFA matches, was the highest in Europa League history.