Emotional Sverrisson bursting with Icelandic pride

After falling just a goal short of qualifying for the UEFA European Under-21 Championship semi-finals, there was obvious disappointment for Iceland coach Eyjólfur Sverrisson, although his was an overwhelming sense of pride at the "perfect attitude" of his players in the 3-1 victory against Denmark. Opposite number Keld Bordinggaard rued Denmark's wasted chances, before looking back on "a fantastic journey" and forward to a bright future.

Eyjólfur Sverrisson, Iceland coach
There's a lot of pride for sure, we have a terrific team. For a small country it's unbelievable that we are already here in this tournament. The whole nation is absolutely proud of the team and we're looking to the future to see more.

We only needed one more goal to succeed and there's obviously disappointment. I had a feeling that our game plan would get us through but we had a difficult task. We had to be patient, to try and get one goal. This would mean the Danish team would open up, creating more space and chances for us. It went that way, so we were pleased with that. The goalkeeper made a lot of good saves and we showed that we deserved to be here.

It was very emotional. I always showed my emotions as a player and I'm not afraid to show them as a coach – it's part of the game.

We are developing as players, and have a lot of young, talented players hungry for success. They have perfect attitudes to be great players – they always work hard and the character of Icelandic players is great.

The players have learned a lot, absolutely. They know now how to react in such big games. They're speaking to journalists sometimes twice a day, and there was a lot of tension in the beginning because the pressure was high. We only had three days to prepare for the tournament which was obviously too small. We would have been able to succeed more if everything had been perfect and we had a little bit of luck on our side.

Keld Bordinggaard, Denmark coach
Obviously this was not our best match of the tournament. I don't think we settled in the game the way we wanted to at any time. It's a major disappointment of course. The biggest disappointment is that once again we created many goalscoring chances but didn't score more. It was the same story in the first two games but we were still alive. I have just spoken to the players. It's probably the heaviest day they have experienced in their careers. I feel the same way.

It has been a fantastic journey, and I hope these guys will look back and acknowledge that they learned something through this process. Excuse me for not analysing it in depth, it was a special game with its own soul – a very open, crazy game because of the situation. We tried everything we could, but we could not score and that's why we are leaving now.

It's just as big a disappointment [for me] as it is for the players, it's the first time in my career that I have not reached the goal set for me. But now I am thinking about the players, they gave everything in every game and created enough to go through to the semi-finals.

Right now the Under-17s are in Mexico for the World Cup, which hasn't happened before. We are now seeing a lot of players coming through earlier with more skills – that's a little light for this team. It's looking quite bright but we would have loved to have gone on to the semis. You can sense the atmosphere around this team, and they responded by opening up and playing good football. If we can remember that from this tournament and take this with us, then the future is looking bright in my opinion.