Job done for Bini, dream alive for Quereda

Bruno Bini, France coach
Are we favourites to win the competition? We're favourites … to finish top of the group. The overriding sentiment is happiness. If you follow this type of competition, you know it's not often a team wins their group after two games. I'm also satisfied with the performance of the girls, even it wasn't our best ever game. Sometimes you have to know how to play badly. The important thing was to win.

We made a choice to start in the first half with density in midfield. In the second half, we sent on two 'banderillas' [Élodie Thomis and Eugénie Le Sommer] as we knew Spain would have to open up at the back. After that, they'd have to be careful, otherwise we would hurt them on the break, either on the left or the right. When things got hot for us, that gave us pace to get out of trouble.

It did us good to score at the start. That allowed us to wait for them and that was the scenario we'd planned for. We also knew that if with we had a bit of difficulty we could change after half an hour. And the girls were ready for that. In all our preparation games, we tried different systems – perhaps we didn't win them all but they did us help us on that front.

When our observers did the first half of their presentation on the Spain team, it lasted 30 minutes. I asked them before the second part to remind the girls that the world champions are Spain men's team, not the women – because from what they showed us, the women looked unbeatable. So we knew they were a very good team. They'll leave other sides with bruises.

Ignacio Quereda, Spain coach
My evaluation of the match is very positive, although the result was negative. The team competed very well, with a great attitude and we could have levelled the scores. We failed to take our chances, but I'm satisfied with the team's overall performance.

On the defensive side, we played with great dignity; the players fought and suffered, and that will help us grow as a team. Before we came to this tournament, the logical result would have been that we'd lose points to France. Our goal was to reach the next round and be able to qualify in our last match, so we will do that. Our goal remains intact and we will keep fighting for it. Congratulations to the France team for their victory.

I made my second-half changes because we needed to get more players to participate in this tournament. We know France are a strong team, but we needed to give time on the pitch to more players.