Belief pays off for Terim's Turkey

Fatih Terim, Turkey coach
It wouldn't have mattered if we'd lost 2-0 or 4-0, so we had to go for it. Even when everyone else was settling for penalties after we pulled level, I was signalling for the team to try for a third goal. We didn't start well in the match because, simply put, we couldn't. The Czechs played better than us in the first half. But even when things were going against us, we kept trying to play the right way. We never gave up hope and our performance in the second half was very good. I'm just very pleased to have a group of players who just don't give up, who don't stop until the final whistle.

We showed the world what we can do and we went on right to the very end. What was important for us is that we believed in ourselves. We have players suspended and injured for the quarter-finals, but we have good reserves. Hopefully in the next match we will play as well as we did late on – but right from the beginning. Our next opponents Croatia are a good team who beat Germany, but so are we, and we're getting better with each passing day. We will go to Vienna for the game and let's hope we stay there until 29 June.

Karel Brückner, Czech Republic coach
We tried to win the game from the start and exploit any space and we were initially successful in our approach. However, in the later stages we could certainly have made some better decisions. I felt we defended very well in the first half and our defence looked OK. At the start of the second period we came under a five-minute spell of immense pressure, but we came out of it unscathed and began to play more positively. The key factor was that we were in possession of the ball and went on to score a second. After that we had several chances to score but did not take them.

In the end we didn't manage to defend our box and, at the highest level, it isn't possible to play like that without being punished eventually. With only 15 minutes remaining, we lost it. They scored the first, then we made a mistake for the second and the third was a collapse from our point of view. When we were in the lead, it was only natural that we came under pressure and we had to anticipate that. The key is not to surrender to the pressure – and we did. It will take me a long, long time to get over this disappointment.