Norwegian spirits remain high
Monday, June 6, 2005
Article summary
Bjarne Berntsen felt his Norway side were unlucky to lose against Germany - and his opposite number agreed.
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By Kevin Ashby at Halliwell Jones stadium
The Norway coach Bjarne Berntsen remained upbeat despite losing their opening Group B game against Germany tonight. Conny Pohlers scored the only goal in the 61st minute after Norway had twice gone close in as many previous attacks. The Scandinavians now face a crunch game on Thursday against France, 3-0 winners against an Italian side who will not relish facing the holders the same day. uefa.com rounds up the reaction from Warrington.
Tina Theune-Meyer, Germany coach
The most important thing is the three points so I'm happy with that. However, I'm not satisfied with the way we played as we found it hard to establish ourselves on the game - there were too many stray passes and we found making chances difficult. In general the game went back and forth without anyone dominating. They put a lot of pressure on us and attacked early, making it difficult for us to stay calm.
Another reason why we could not find our rhythm was that we attacked too early and eagerly, leaving space for Norway which meant we had to run too much. For the first game of a tournament everyone is always nervous but I'm optimistic that we will find our form. The Norwegians said they will meet us in the final and maybe that will happen.
Bjarne Berntsen, Norway coach
We're disappointed that we lost the game as we feel as though we played quite well against the best team in the world. I'm happy with the amount of chances we created but we just couldn't score. We played with a lot of confidence and it showed although losing the opening game puts a lot of pressure on us going into the next game. In tournament football the most important thing is the result. We can play France in a positive frame of mind because of the way we played here.
Our best attack was after two minutes, we practised that a lot in training and the only thing not good enough was the shot. Unni [Lehn] shot to the near corner when the far corner of the net was empty although she knows that and was very disappointed afterwards. Sometimes you just need that bit of luck to beat the world champions. We hope that we showed the fans some good, attacking football as we're looking forward to coming back here on Thursday.