Spain were then handed a controversial penalty as Vrsaljko bundled down Silva in the box, but after captain Darijo Srna gave Subasic instructions to dive right as Ramos stepped up, the stopper answered the command and beat away the Real Madrid defender’s effort.
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“I am aware winning against Spain is a huge achievement, now we can be really confident”. “I have to congratulate all my team-mates and our supporter”. “We deserve it, for all the good work we’ve been doing all these years”.
“We have time to analyse the meeting with Italy”. Turkey beat Czech republic 2-0 to secure the third spot in Group D. Goals from Burak Yilmaz in the 10th minute and another by Ozan Tufan in the 65th minute sealed the deal.
The man tasked with guiding the side to this stage, manager Ante Cacic, hailed his team’s victory. Luckily, the result went the way we wanted. “We won against the European champion”, Cacic said.
Eight teams still need to play their final group games, and many other third-placed teams nervously await the results of these games.
“We had the game more or less controlled, but we made some errors and they punished us”, he said.
“It is not ideal, that would have been to finish first (in the group)”, said Del Bosque. In all three matches we were really aggressive we were playing to win every match.
For Terim, his team have finally got going, but there is still a risk that tonight’s game will be their last at the tournament.
“We achieved first place and I can be really satisfied that, in all three matches, we were really aggressive, we played to win”, said Cacic.
Although it was a first defeat in 15 matches at the finals for Spain since they lost to Portugal in 2004, they did recover from an opening defeat by Switzerland to win the 2010 World Cup.
“We can’t blame De Gea”, Del Bosque said. “A lapse in the 89th [sic] minute with the score in our favour is not something we should allow to happen”. We lacked concrete chances and in the end they scored on a counter-attack.
Despite not conceding in Spain’s first two games, De Gea was heavily criticised by Spanish supporters but speaking about his performance, Del Bosque says the Spaniard can’t be blamed for the goals. “I think this is a golden chance for us to do something big and go all the way”.
“We have to recover mentally and emotionally”.
He added: “Looking at the draw for the knockout stages, we are on the half where none of the favourites are and will play the victor of Switzerland vs Poland if we make the quarterfinals”.
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“We are disappointed. The path now might be seen as more hard but you never know where the danger is”.
