Dimarco shares credit with united Italy

Federico Dimarco, Italy left-back
It's a great victory for the group – we're a group, and when we win, we do it together.

We work on penalties as a squad – we all practice them in training, and we work hard on them. For the free-kick, I was over the ball with [Manuel] Locatelli, it was in a central position and we saw the goalkeeper was on one side of the goal, so we decided I would take it and go for the other corner.

I learned so much from getting to the U17 final [in 2013; Italy lost on penalties to Russia]; learning is good as it helps you play better. I want to thank all my team-mates because even if I score the goals, it is the whole team that wins. We're in the final now and we'll do our best to win that as well.

I watch Jordi Alba and, going further back, Roberto Carlos – I study them and take parts of their game into my own.

Paolo Vanoli, Italy coach
We have class and we've proved that. This is a high-level tournament and you don't tend to have so many opportunities; the few you have, you have to take.

Dimarco had to go off but I think he'll be fine for the final. Maybe he'd been celebrating his goals too much! He's a defender who has good technical qualities. He played [on loan at Ascoli] in Serie B this year and did very well. He shows that physical qualities aren't the most important things – his technical qualities are what counts.

This is a victory for the whole squad. It will be very important in showing our clubs that we have good young players who deserve the chance to play first-team football.

Aidy Boothroyd, England coach
Obviously we're very disappointed. That's as well as we've played in the tournament but it's goals that win games and change games, and we lost to a very organised Italian team. I hope today will be a very good lesson for our team – the hurt of losing a semi-final is a situation we can learn a lot from.

Italy coach Paolo Vanoli at the post-match press conference©Sportsfile

Their goalkeeper is probably man of the match. He's made some terrific saves, got lucky on some occasions and we haven't been as clinical as we normally are. Those would be the three main reasons [for the result].

[Italy's second goal] was a fantastic free-kick. Games like this, with two good teams, are usually settled by errors and set-pieces. Today we've got done by two set-pieces which normally we're very good at, but I won't be the last coach to come away disappointed from playing Italy. We knew before what they were good at. Congratulations to them and good luck for the final.

To reach a semi-final, with some of the teams here, is an achievement. We've got to the [2017 U20] World Cup and that's excellent – and of course we'll be looking to do better there.