Sørensen stays cool after Denmark setback

It was a tale of two keepers in Copenhagen on Wednesday. Denmark custodian Thomas Sørensen was left to rue his failure to stop a long-range Andrey Arshavin shot on his 100th appearance, while Vladimir Gabulov could celebrate a clean sheet to mark a rare start for Russia. Yet Sørensen refused to be too down, stressing "there is still a long way to go" in Morten Olsen's men's UEFA EURO 2012 preparations after this 2-0 defeat.

Thomas Sørensen, Denmark goalkeeper
There are things we can learn from this. Russia use a high pressing game while we try to play our way out with combinations, but we ended up hitting the ball long, making it easy for them to pick it up and put us under pressure. But I'd rather this happened now. We have been in this situation before and need to be careful not to get our hopes too high. There is still a long way to go. Somebody told me there's 100 days to go before the tournament starts. We have a good, long time to prepare so it will be completely different at the EURO.

[For the second goal] we needed to put more pressure on Arshavin, who easily got the chance to shoot. Of course, this doesn't change the fact I should have saved it. We lost the ball and I couldn't see the ball behind Simon Kjær, but that's just how it is.

William Kvist, Denmark midfielder
We had a couple of chances, but nothing clear-cut. If you look at the shots on goal it was OK. You can always say that Russia sat back on the result and, of course, it's a shame they got such a quick goal – and the one just before the break too. We have been at a high level and this was just one friendly. We've just beaten Sweden [2-0 in November] so let's be careful and not say this was terrible. It wasn't – but we have to learn from this and be in the game 200%.

Vladimir Gabulov, Russia goalkeeper
I was told [I was starting] during the pre-match briefing when the coach named the XI and I just started preparing for the game. I am not a boy any more, I have quite a lot of experience. A goalkeeper must be calm so I tried to be steady so the boys knew they could rely on me. I didn't think about my own performance and was just preparing for the match. My goal was to keep a clean sheet and be as effective as I could be when launching our attacks. We prepared knowing that Denmark had finished first in their qualifying group, beating Portugal, so we were very thorough in our preparations.

Diniyar Bilyaletdinov, Russia midfielder
The early goal [from Roman Shirokov] helped us a lot but the final score was 2-0 so I think the victory was well deserved. It was a friendly but we needed a good result and we got it so I can point out only the positive things. I can sympathise with their goalkeeper [about the second goal] because the direction of the shot was quite unpredictable and, as far as I could see, the defender was blocking his view.