Europe celebrate victory in Barcelona (©Sportsfile)Meridian coaches count the positives
Tuesday, 27 February 2007
e-mail
PrintIñaki Sáez, head coach of Europe's Under-18 selection, and his African counterpart Frederick Osam-Duodu were keen to accentuate the positives after Sáez's side produced a blistering attacking performance at the Mini Estadi in Barcelona to run out 6-1 winners in the first leg of the 6th UEFA-CAF Meridian Cup.
Iñaki Sáez, Europe head coach
I'm very pleased, particularly as we had difficulties in selecting the team. Competition to be chosen for the squad was very tough and for the team it was even harder. It was the first time I'd ever worked with these players. The next match is on Thursday morning so I expect that to be very different as playing conditions will be different, and I expect the African players to do much better – I know they're capable of more. Our team changed all the time, even at the last minute Armand Traoré was called back by Arsenal [FC] to play in their first team, so that left us a defender short. All of the squad will participate in this competition; the players who were involved today were those who hadn't played so much recently, and we'll make sure everyone else gets a game on Thursday.
Frederick Osam-Duodu, Africa head coach
I'm obviously disappointed, it's never easy to be positive after you've been beaten so heavily. We had a number of selection problems and this is the first time I've seen some of these players, but fortunately we were able to correct our early problems and there was a big improvement from just before half-time onwards. In fact, the rest of the match went quite well for us. It's pleasing the way the players responded to the changes we made during the match and the way they improved as the game went on. We got better after a poor start, and were still getting better when the final whistle went. These boys were playing together for the first time and that's why they struggled initially, but in the next match you will see something better from them.
©uefa.com 1998-2007. All rights reserved.
