Meinert savours Germany's sweet success

After a four-year wait, coach Maren Meinart said Germany's 2011 UEFA European Women's Under-19 Championship victory against Norway was "the sweetest" of her three triumphs. An 8-1 win, the biggest for a final in the history of the competition, left opposite number Jarl Torske "embarrassed and humiliated".

Maren Meinert, Germany coach
In the second half we finally worked out how to score with almost every shot at goal. It's good because we created so many chances in the past but we were always waiting for that good result, which never came. Sometimes it's just luck. We got the goal early in the second half and then we scored three more in about ten minutes.

I moved [Lena] Lotzen up front because she is a player who likes to get behind defenders and I put Eunice [Beckmann] on the flank because she can be good in one on ones. And then the two of them were told to switch occasionally. Jennifer Cramer came in at full-back because she has a good left foot and is fast and I think it worked well.

It tastes sweeter than my win in 2007 because when I started to coach I had two straight wins and I probably thought that I had to get to the final every year. Then we had four years without reaching the final and it was very important for us to win the title again. I think it's sweeter because I know how much hard work it is.

I also want to say that I'm sitting here as coach but my assistant Bettina [Wiegmann] did all the work throughout the year and I was hopping on and off the coach's seat. So I want to thank her for all her hard work. She was really the coach of this team this year but she is a little bit shy so she is sitting on the team bus.

Jarl Torske, Norway coach
We feel embarrassed and humiliated. The first half was acceptable but in the second we were terrible. We couldn't catch them. It was Germany at their best and we couldn't keep up with their pace and speed. It looked like there were more German players all over the place because we gave then too much space and didn't move fast enough. It was a sad experience.

We were not quite so close to equalising this time [as they did in a 3-1 group stage defeat]. After the first match I said to Maren that they deserved to win, but we hoped to play better because we felt we had improved throughout the tournament and we were in good spirits. But the second half was a terrible experience for a coach because you felt helpless, because everything was going wrong. They were coming at us again and again.

It was Germany at their best. Their passing skill, their individual skill, their ability in one-on-one situations, all credit to Germany. We are just sorry we couldn't give a better performance. We feel like we have spoiled the final and this result feels like it has spoiled the tournament for us but hopefully things will look up tomorrow.