U21 Euro 2007: Matchday 3 Reaction

Italy coach Pierluigi Casiraghi said his side had not got what they deserved after the five-time winners bowed out of the European Under-21 Championship despite concluding their Group B campaign with a 3-1 victory against the Czech Republic in Arnhem.

England's 2-0 win against group winners Serbia in the section's other fixture left the Azzurrini in third place on four points and facing a play-off against Portugal on Thursday for a place in next year's Olympic Games, while Czech coach Ladislav Skorpil took comfort from his side's improved display despite ending the tournament in fourth position.

Pierluigi Casiraghi (Italy coach): We deserved to go through; in 270 minutes of football 15 minutes have cost us. Obviously we're very disappointed but five minutes against Serbia, when we conceded a goal from their only chance, and ten against England have been crucial. That's the only time we had problems but we have to accept that. That's football and we must pick ourselves up and carry on. I don't think we made any mistakes; apart from those two spells we played great football. Apart from that, we showed our quality and played very good football. The players created so many chances against Serbia and England, they did their best and couldn't do any more than that. In the group stage when you lose one game it's too hard to recover.

Ladislav Skorpil (Czech Republic coach): We played better than we did in the first two games, we got better in every match and improved all the time. Tonight was an unusual game, both teams had to win to stay in the tournament, whether to get to the semi-finals or the Olympic Games. In the first two games we played good football but without scoring so we changed things around a bit tonight and tried a new approach. I brought in Martin Kuncl and Martin Klein and they're two of the more attacking defenders in the Czech league; we tried something new. You have to try something different all the time. In attack we can be satisfied with our performance and Michal Papadopulos played very well. At this level, how you start a match is crucial and we let a goal in after four minutes. We managed to equalise but the decisive moment was their third goal just before half-time.

[U21 Euro 2007 Championship Finals Schedule]