'The real Spain stood up'
Friday, July 20, 2007
Article summary
Spain coach Ignacio Quereda was delighted to see his players shed their nerves and claim a first Group B victory at the expense of Robert Góralczyk's Poland.
Article body
Ignacio Quereda, Spain coach
Today we saw the real Spain – they showed us what they are about. We were clearly the better team and the scoreline reflects that. Itsaso [Navaskues] came into midfield and moved the ball around well while Laura [Requena] came in on the wing. The girls showed the right attitude and mentality; they are gifted players with good technical ability who know how to play football. We hope they are fully over their nerves and that today was a prelude to what we are going to see against England in three days' time. We have been telling them to forget their display against France, telling them they are better than that, and today their faith in themselves was justified. The England game will be a final: both teams need to win. We are excited and confident in our own strengths but we are taking nothing for granted because we respect the opposition.
Robert Góralczyk, Poland coach
Spain are a very strong team and in the first qualifying round they beat us 4-0 – they were the only goals we conceded during the two qualifying stages. Today we let in two goals from many Spanish chances and my goalkeeper [Anna Bocian] was in great form. For me it is a good scoreline because we are in a different place to Spain at the moment and we will learn from these experiences. I am happy: we kept them at 0-0 for a long time and had two or three half-chances ourselves when we might have taken the lead. We played the same game that we did against England although in that match we had more opportunities. Today we were a bit tired. We now have three days' rest before we play France, which is better than two, and this will be another very difficult game. They have to win while I must tell my team that we will be playing to win too.