San Marino joy at historic point
Saturday, November 15, 2014
Article summary
San Marino coach Pierangelo Manzaroli and captain Andy Selva were understandably thrilled by their firstUEFA EURO point against an Estonia side searching for answers.
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Article body
• San Marino gain first-ever UEFA EURO qualifying point, holding Estonia 0-0
• Coach Pierangelo Manzaroli says hard work paid off
• Captain Andy Selva dedicates result to the late Federico Crescentini
• Estonia's Magnus Pehrsson blames nerves, tiredness and failure of tactics
• Next games: Slovenia v San Marino, Switzerland v Estonia (27 March)
Pierangelo Manzaroli, San Marino coach
In recent months our workload has increased and the work has paid off. This result is a reward for the players and it will be an incentive to gain other good results sooner than in 12 years' time [their previous competitive point was in 2001].
Andy Selva, San Marino captain
I remember the win in Liechtenstein [a 2004 friendly] but this has a different meaning. I have been waiting for a result like this for 11 years. We are upset about some opportunities we didn't take. We want to dedicate this result to Federico Crescentini, a former international who died some years ago. We searched for this result for years and now we found it.
Magnus Pehrsson, Estonia coach
We made a lot of technical mistakes during the game. I think there are three main reasons for this result: first the players didn't recover well from the match against Norway three day ago. Moreover, we haven't been able to develop the ideas and tactical opportunities we worked on ahead of this game. I blame myself for this and take full responsibility. Finally we seemed too stressed about this game and we didn't perform as expected.
San Marino played the game we expected from them: deep defence and counterattacks. We have made a lot of history in recent days by winning in Norway and now helping San Marino gain a point.