Collective strength the key in Sporting victory

Despite having scored one goal and set up another in Sporting Clube de Portugal's 2-0 victory against FC Zürich, Emiliano Insúa was reluctant to take the plaudits insisting that it "was a very good collective effort" which got their UEFA Europa League Group D campaign off to a winning start. The Argentina defender opened the scoring after four minutes before supplying the cross for Ricky van Wolfswinkel to double their lead midway through the first half.

Emiliano Insúa, Sporting defender
I feel happy after that. It was a great game from all of us. I'm pleased that I scored one and set one up but the most important thing was that we won in this European competition and the three points will serve us well. Our coach likes us to attack, push up the pitch and make sure that we have the ball more than our opponents and we managed to do that at the beginning. We lost a bit of momentum in the second half, we tired a little and I guess the onus was on them to look for the goals that would get them level. The main thing is that we closed the game out well.

For my goal, it was a very good delivery from Stijn (Schaars) and it just needed me to get my head on it to direct it goalwards. It was great to score a goal that helped us get a win. It was a very good collective effort and it's always a great feeling to set up a team-mate.

Oguchi Onyewu, Sporting defender
I don't think that there was that much difference between the teams. Zürich had their chances as well but fortunately we were able to take ours. We got off to a very good start and that's important when you're playing away from home. In the first half we played much better, in the second half Zürich were pushing to get a goal. Fortunately we were able to resist their attacks and shut them out.

Of course, we have to take it one game at a time and get through the group stages first but we have started our Europa League campaign well. We don't just want to reach the final, we want to win it outright and a club like Sporting should have ambitions to win a competition like this.

Johnny Leoni, Zürich goalkeeper
That result has put me in a bad mood. You can't be anything but disappointed with a 2-0 defeat at home. At the beginning we didn't close them down well enough and some of us weren't alert. It's hard to believe that we conceded a goal after four minutes from a free-kick. In such an important game against Sporting, that is really disappointing. Now we have to react well at the weekend in our Swiss Cup match, but it won't be easy.

Xavier Margairaz, Zürich midfielder
We could have got more from the game. We had three or four good chances to score but we didn't take them which is a pity because we played well otherwise. It's obvious that if you let in two goals in the opening 30 minutes, it's very difficult to come back from that. We may have shown a bit too much respect to Sporting early on but then we grew into the match after letting in the second goal. If we want to win this type of game, we'll have to work even harder.