Peacock wants more from England

UEFA European Under-17 Championship Group B leaders England may be through to the semi-finals with a game to spare, and Turkey three points clear in second, but their respective coaches were far from fully satisfied on Friday. John Peacock's England secured a narrow 1-0 victory against Greece, whose coach was gracious in elimination, while Turkey's Abdullah Ercan was relieved to have earned a point after a below-par performance against the Czech Republic.

GREECE 0-1 ENGLAND
John Peacock, England manager
I credit the Greek team because they worked very hard tonight. It was everything I've seen on the videos; very passionate with a good team spirit. They gave our team a problem tonight. I'm delighted that we've qualified for the semi-finals, though. Could we have been better? Yes. Saying that, we defended very well. It's hard when it's 1-0 to keep your concentration, but we were very disciplined at the back. We dealt with most things but our attacking play generally needed to be tidied up a little bit.

Leonidas Vokolos, Greece coach
We knew from the start when we were drawn in the same group that we had a team against us who, in my opinion, are one of the best teams in the tournament. I think my team were very unlucky because in the first half we lost two players through injury. But this is football. We kept trying in the second half to press England even more but, in the end, they won the game fairly.

TURKEY 1-1 CZECH REPUBLIC
Abdullah Ercan, Turkey coach
I am only happy about the score. We did not play very well in general, I was expecting that our performance wouldn't be quite as good as against Greece, but I wasn't expecting it to be that much worse. We wanted to keep the game tight and now we have four points, we have the advantage. I thought that we had the advantage, I thought that we oughtn't to have lost the game. If someone had to take risks, it was them, not us. We didn't come for a draw, we wanted a win. We were lucky to be ahead, it was a present for us.

Jiří Štol, Czech Republic coach
After we lost against England we knew we had to win today. In the first half we were a little bit nervous, too many passes went astray. In the second half we made a poor start, a big mistake from Filip Twardzik led to the goal. It was very bad for us that we had to score twice. We made some changes, we had three great chances but didn't score. But in the end I think a draw is a good result for both teams. We tried to score a second but Turkey had some opportunities in the final minutes too. I am glad that we are still in contention for our third game and can still compete for a semi-final place. I hope we are lucky and can go through.