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Salpingidis feels Greece soul power

Dimitris Salpingidis credited Greece's second-half rally against Poland to his side having "put our soul into it", while team-mate Kostas Katsouranis was optimistic after the 1-1 draw.

Dimitris Salpingidis celebrates scoring the equaliser in Warsaw
Dimitris Salpingidis celebrates scoring the equaliser in Warsaw ©AFP/Getty Images

Having come off the bench to score the equaliser in their 1-1 Group A draw against co-hosts Poland, Dimitris Salpingidis saluted his ten-man Greece side's resilience, while team-mate Kostas Katsouranis was sufficiently reassured by their second-half showing to predict that the Greeks would make it through the UEFA EURO 2012 group stage.

Dimitris Salpingidis, Greece forward
We are not satisfied, because the second half of the match was a completely different game. We had a lot of bad moments in the first half and a lot of bad luck; however, during the second half we did our best, we put our soul into it. The moment we missed the penalty proves exactly what I said, we could have won. Unfortunately, we got a draw, one point, and we'll carry on. Both of our upcoming games are difficult, Russia and against the Czech Republic. We will try to do our best and if we manage to qualify, we will all be very happy.

Were we disappointing in the first half? This happens a lot in football, and it happened to our team today. However, what you have to do is to never give up trying. Even if you can't play as you have planned, you have to try hard, and that's exactly what we all did.

Kostas Katsouranis, Greece midfielder
The first 20 minutes were a bad start for us: the Polish started the match very aggressively. Though we knew that they are very strong down the right, that's where they created most of the trouble for us, and I think we're all responsible for that, since we did not manage to keep them away from that flank, as we had planned. They missed chances, which was a warning for us, but we finally conceded a goal. I’m not saying that it is the left-back's [José Holebas] fault; we know that we're all responsible, since we did not perform well in defence on that wing. However we came around after that. We played very well, and I believe we deserved to win for the remaining 70 minutes. I think we will qualify - we've got what it takes.