The result means defending champions Spain finished second in the group and must now face Italy in the knockout stage, and Ramos said they needed to learn from their errors. That will be made clear when the final round of group stage games is played on Wednesday.
Advertisement
Czech Republic have been eliminated.
We have time to analyse what the game against Italy means.
“You have to happy that you are not playing against Croatia”, he said when asked why he wanted to avoid Italy, where he plays his club football with Inter Milan, by scoring a sensational late victor.
“We could not have done this without our great support, all these people who come from Croatia, we have to stay and fight and we want to make every single Croatian happy”.
Forward Marko Pjaca also shone as he delivered a defence-splitting pass for Perisic’s victor, with injured playmaker Luka Modric, Croatia’s key player, celebrating on the bench.
Croatia leveled the score through Nikola Kalinic whose fancy touch left De Gea stranded at goal post before Ivan Perisic added the victor in the dying moments of the game.
Turkey beat Czech Republic 2-0 through goals from Burak Yilmaz and Ozan Tufan, to keep alive their very slim hopes of reaching the next round.
La Roja had an opportunity to snatch the win when they were awarded a penalty in the 72nd minute.
Spain’s setback on Tuesday night has also resulted in the team being placed in the bottom half of the draw, which includes the likes of France, Germany and England.
Turkey must wait until the final group matches are played today to discover whether it can advance as one of the four best third-place teams. “We won against the European champions”, the 62-year-old said. We went looking for the goal and we were caught unawares.
“We have lots of confidence in the physical condition of our players”. We don’t fear anyone and we have to be ready to compete against the best.
“What we have done over the three games we have deserved that chance”, Northern Ireland coach Michael O’Neill said after his team’s one-sided loss.
“Northern Ireland did not have a chance to make a goal, and the defence was (Mats) Hummels and (Jerome) Boateng are very flawless”, said a happy Germany supporter.
Advertisement
Both these sides sit in the box seat in Group D but they approach their final round-robin match in contrasting moods. We dominated at the beginning, created chances, went ahead and then we let them back into it, I had the chance to put the team back in front but it wasn’t to be, that’s a shame.
