Giggs happy to harbour United responsibilities

Manchester United FC defender Chris Smalling and SL Benfica midfielder Ruben Amorim both hailed Ryan Giggs's equaliser in Wednesday's Group C meeting as "a great goal". However Giggs, who has now struck in a record 16 UEFA Champions League campaigns and is the competition's oldest scorer, felt he should have done better with a second-half chance, before telling UEFA.com: "Overall we are happy with the 1-1 draw."

Ryan Giggs, United midfielder
I'm lucky enough to play with good players and over the last few years we've had a good record in Europe, especially away from home and we continued that tonight so I'm really pleased with the performance. Benfica are a good team and we knew it was going to be a tough game, and it got even tougher when they went ahead. We had to dig deep and use our experience.

Sometimes you've got to rely on individuals to score the goals or create the goals, and tonight it was me; other nights it will be someone else. For my second-half chance the goalkeeper came sprinting out and I probably should have tried to dink it over him. Overall we are happy with the 1-1 draw. I think Benfica are our main [group] rivals with the experience the two teams have got in Europe. We'll probably start off as favourites but we're yet to face the other teams, so we'll wait and see.

Chris Smalling, United defender
We knew it was going to be a tough one. When we looked at the group we picked this out as our toughest game and it's good to get it out of the way early. Overall we created a lot of chances and were disappointed not to kill it off. Even when we have gone behind, especially last season, we've always come back to get a result. I think we always felt confident we'd get a result tonight.

It's incredible what Ryan has done over the years and he just keeps producing the goods and it was a great goal from him tonight and another good performance. Benfica are our biggest rivals, even if we haven't had a good look at the other two sides yet. Benfica have a great history and I think it will be another interesting battle when they come to Old Trafford.

Javi García, Benfica midfielder
We come out of this with our heads held high. We faced one of the best teams in the world and we played without fear. We put in a great performance and we had some good chances to win this match. However, we know that we faced a very good team and we knew beforehand that they would have the majority of possession.

We tried to close down the space and Manchester United did not create that many chances. If we continue to play like this it will be very hard for any team to beat us. Playing like this we will certainly achieve our goals. I don't know if we're the two best teams in the group but hopefully we will reach the last 16.

Ruben Amorim, Benfica midfielder
We knew that it would be a very difficult match for us, but we managed to score first. Then Manchester United scored the equaliser and it was a momentary lapse of concentration on our part, even though I think it was more down to the quality of their play than our mistake. It was a great goal by Giggs. They're a great team and at the end of the day it's not a bad result for us.

[Matchday two visitors] Basel won their first match at home and we must approach all the games in the same manner and consider that all four teams in the group are battling for qualification.