Marley hails Germany 'quality'

Germany coach Maren Meinert was elated after her side retained the UEFA European Women's Under-19 Championship with a 2-0 victory against England in Reykjavik. Nathalie Bock and Monique Kerschowski scored the goals in the second period of extra time to secure a win Meinert felt her team deserved, an opinion backed up by England counterpart Mo Marley as she admitted Germany had that "extra bit of quality" needed to prevail.

Maren Meinert, Germany coach
It feels great. It's been a good game, England didn't really take the game to us so it was important to come through in the end. For eleven of the players, today is the first time they've won and for the others you want to win and you want to win the championship. The second one is no different to the first - they're all great. We had a lot of possession and we had to work. In extra time they were still in good shape and it was hard to create the first goal. We play a short passing game and the weather made it difficult today. Next is the [FIFA U-20] World Cup - we have 17 months to get ready.

Mo Marley, England manager
Obviously we're disappointed to lose in the manner we did but that's the fine line between winning competitions and not. We had a game plan, it worked and we were confident we could get to extra time and then maybe penalties, and get something from it. It wasn't to be today but it's a new experience for all us and it shows what we can do. It's a foundation and now the bar has been raised and hopefully there are more finals to come. We were resilient, we were hard but I don't think we had enough quality to win the game - you have to have that extra bit of quality and Germany had that today. From tomorrow we'll start preparing for [the World Cup in] Chile.