New-look Italy get rave reviews from De Rossi

• Daniele De Rossi was happy to put Italy's FIFA World Cup exit behind them with a 2-0 win
• New coach Antonio Conte praised "a team the Italy fans can be proud of"
• After the Group H loss, Joshua King admitted "we lost to a better team"
• Norway coach Per-Mathias Høgmo concedes his "inexperienced" team were outplayed

Daniele De Rossi, Italy midfielder
I'm very happy because it's always important to start off with a win, especially at such a difficult place to come against a good side in my opinion so this is an important win.

It was very important because we're coming off the back of a World Cup which wasn't positive – it was negative – so every win, in addition to the points it gets you, gives you also that little bit more self-belief. You never forget the World Cup after just two games because it was a huge disappointment, but there's nothing we can do about that. All we can try to do is win every game.

[Antonio Conte] has done some substantial work in such a short space of time, which is certainly quite incredible in terms of the attention and the work he does on the field, so we're happy.

[Emanuele Giaccherini, Simone Zaza and Ciro Immobile] are intelligent players who move around well on the field and they are all technically very strong and, like I said, there are some mechanisms which we've studied in these really few days we've had together and you can already see them and this is helping us even more.

Antonio Conte, Italy coach
Let's say we've had nine good, intense days together and I admit I did have a few worries – not fear though – because it's completely different to being a club coach. You've got to get to know the new lads and work with them. Simone [Zaza] has done really well, like Ciro [Immobile] has too. They are both modern attackers who get involved going forwards and going backwards. They can get better and they've got to get better, like the whole team.

We were very dangerous at times. I'm particularly pleased with the young players like [Mattia] De Sciglio, [Matteo] Darmian, Immobile, Zaza, [Alessandro] Florenzi, [Andrea] Poli when he came on, [Mattia] Destro – they're all young players. This has got to be our present and our future.

We've got to work hard with these lads to get out of a bit of a rut. It was very important to get to know each other and I've got to say I've been very impressed in a positive sense to find these lads who were so proud to wear these colours.

I'm convinced it's not going to be easy for anybody to come and play here. I'm honest when I say that my team did everything well and this is the reason why we got this win, which is very important for us.

We're trying to create a team with a capital 'T' and I think we have the ingredients which can give us plenty to be happy about, and a team the Italy fans can be proud of. If they are happy, then we are happy too.

Joshua King, Norway forward
We tried hard. We lost to a better team today. In the first half, I had a chance that went into the side-netting. I tried to swing my foot around the ball, but I just didn't get through it. As soon as they scored a goal, their defenders just went back and defended very well. They are a good team, probably the toughest we're going to meet in our group.

I didn't really have a 100% chance today, like I had maybe against England. I don't think anything could happen. It was one of the best goalkeepers in the world I've played against as well so I just have to take the experience that I had today and so should my team-mates, and we should just keep going forward. This is only the first game out of ten so we've got to believe in ourselves, but it wasn't easy today.

Obviously if you get the first goal, you're most likely to win games most of the time, but when they got the second that killed the game. We fell asleep on the corner, it was two v one and a great cross and he just headed the ball. They could even have got three or four – they hit the crossbar and the header, and that chip when Zaza went through. We're disappointed, but we've just got to keep going; we've got nine games left.

Per-Mathias Høgmo, Norway coach
We did quite well in the first half. Then the second half proved that we aren't good enough to get points. Today we faced a good team with strong players. In the end, Italy's win was well deserved.

We started with a very young and inexperienced team today. It's good for these players to face such a strong team, I think they can learn a lot from it. That's the main issue for this team. Many of the players need experience from games against top opponents.

We know that there is a big difference in quality when we face Italy, one of the world's strongest teams. We don't create a lot of chances. We know that we lack a goalscorer in our team. That has been a problem for Norway for the last two or three years. As a team we must be better at creating chances and scoring goals than we were today.