Late winners delight coaches

UEFA Regions' Cup hosts South-East Region AMA and Bosnia-Herzegovina's Tuzla Canton AMA lead Group A with four points after dramatic victories yesterday. The Bulgarian side's Boris Galchev struck with eight minutes to go to end the campaign of Basse-Normandie AMA, who ended with ten men, while the side that beat the French side on Matchday 1, Northern Ireland's Easter Region AMA, fell to Tuzla after a stunner from Marijan Gajčević and late breakaway finished by substitute Admir Hanić. uefa.com rounds up the reaction.

SOUTH-EAST REGION AMA (BUL) 1-0 BASSE-NORMANDIE AMA (FRA)
Angel Stankov, South-East Region coach
The players here are amateurs and that is one of the reasons the games are so heated. The difference between this and professional football is that the amateurs cannot keep their heads cool and sometimes lose their heads. But we managed to take advantage of the lack of cool thinking in the French team and took all three points. Our opponents also tired physically and we started to get more space. I must tell you this is the first time I have beaten a French team. And I must tell you my first great disappointment in football was against the national side of France - it was in 1977 and we lost to the great team of Michel Platini.

Patrick Gonfalone, Basse-Normandie coach
We are obviously disappointed at going out of the tournament so early. But after the first game, which we should have won by three or four goals, we knew that this was coming. The ill tempered scenes at the end of the game were as a result of our inability to take full control at the game. The substitutions the Bulgarians made had a good impact on their game, while ours didn’t do us any good.

TUZLA CANTON AMA (BIH) 2-0 EASTERN REGION AMA (NIR)
Fuad Grbešić, Tuzla coach
We brought on three substitures who did many good things for us and we have five chances in the second half. The Northern Irish are stong but we had better technique. I think we are slightly better than Northern Ireland and we were the better in the match. The first goal was a great goal. Gajčević scored a wonderful goal, a European goal! Hanić scored against the Bulgarian and now has scored again, we kept him for the second half because he was so tired from the first match.

Harry McConkey, Eastern Region manager 
Football's a strange game. Our first match we probably deserved to lose. And today's game I thought we deserved to win. We dominated possession for long periods we had good chances, but we were beaten by an amazing goal and a silly mistake. Sometimes maybe I expect too much of these lads and I forget thjy are young and I really felt for our guy when he made the mistake. The first goal deserved to be on a bigger stage. We did a lot of things today that was very pleases with and we have got to look at the positives. We showed real pace up front, played better in midfield where I thought Liam Bradley was outstanding, and OK we made one defensive mistake but this happens in football.