Greece trio call for improvement

Giorgios Samaras, Fanis Gekas and José Holebas all lamented Greece's slow start – they were two goals down inside six minutes on their way to a 2-1 loss to the Czech Republic – and know the team must be on their game from the start against Russia on Saturday to be in with a chance of qualifying from Group A.

Giorgios Samaras, Greece forward
This is not the end. I believe that once again we lost because of a bad start. However, in the second half we did our best to change the result. We did not manage it, but we go on. We still believe in our team and in ourselves, and we will keep going until the last minute of this tournament.

Fanis Gekas, Greece forward
We can't explain it. We saw our mistakes; we tried to improve them, but again in the first minutes we performed really badly. The Czech Republic caught us napping, and managed to win the match. We tried to react to those two goals, but we couldn't.

During the second half we started stronger – we wanted to react very quickly. We pushed ourselves to get the second goal but didn't manage to do it, although we had the chances. The only thing we have to do is to win, and if we get a good result we will manage to qualify.

José Holebas, Greece defender
It's difficult to explain. It was like during the first game, the first 20-25 minutes ... I don't know, we were asleep. We completely slept through the first 30 minutes, during the first half. Simple as that. For us it means a final against Russia, that's for sure. We need to get the three points, there's no other way.

Every single one of us needs to have their mind on the game, and right from the start. We must have the will to win the game and not only in the second half like today. We played better then and created some chances but this must happen from the first minute. You have to take control of the game to win it.