Northern Ireland know a win against Belgium in Lurgan on Monday night could take them to the UEFA European Under-17 Championship finals for the first time in six years but manager Paul Kee knows it will be tough. The elite round Group 4 hosts began with a 4-0 loss to Spain but a 1-0 defeat of Poland on Friday revived their hopes, as Kee told UEFA.com.

UEFA.com: Are you pleased with the result and the performance against Poland?

Paul Kee: I'm pleased with the result, first and foremost. We needed to get a win to keep things alive, and obviously in the elite stage we want to make sure we make an impression on the actual elite round, so I'm very pleased with that. I wasn't pleased with the first-half performance; we were slow at getting started, we gave Poland too much time, we stood off them, they were more competitive than us, and from that aspect we were disappointed at half-time. The players felt themselves that they hadn't performed, and in the second half it was much more like us in previous performances, such as in the qualifying stage in Andorra and recently against Norway. We played with a lot more conviction in the second period.

UEFA.com: You're obviously looking forward to Monday's game against Belgium...

Kee: It's going to be a tough game. Belgium now are full of confidence because they've won their two games. They had a brilliant result today against Spain; beating them 1-0 is no mean achievement because Spain are a fantastic side. Belgium are very strong defensively and very well organised, so we have to be at our very best to get the three points.

UEFA.com: How will this mini-tournament benefit your side?

Kee: It gets the players international experience and it puts them into the spotlight, and the profile of UEFA competition. There is definitely a lot of interest in it from clubs and agents, so I'm very pleased that we're able to compete with some of the best teams and some of the major nations. We're a small country, we're proud of our international football and we've got a good result and a good performance, the second-half performance in particular. That's why we're here, to develop our youngsters at international level.