Eyjolfsson gracious after German lesson
Sunday, July 14, 2013
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Iceland coach Sigurdur Eyjolfsson conceded Germany had been simply too good for his side after sweeping to a victory that left a smile on the face of the champions' Silvia Neid.
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Sigurdur Eyjolfsson, Iceland coach
It was a difficult match for us against a quality team. I think we caught them on a good day, but also unfortunately for us, we had a lot of injuries to key players, all midfielders, which didn't help our cause. The gap between the two teams was too big. Germany could have scored more. Congratulations to them, they deserved the win. They were much better than us today.
I'm always disappointed to lose, though I don't think anyone expected us to do much in this game. We've always lost to them. I'm not happy with some of the goals we conceded. But perhaps it's easier to lose to Germany than someone who's closer to you in terms of ability.
We just have to prepare for the game against the Netherlands as well as we can. We're not going to do a lot of physcial work. It's all about recovery as there's not much time between games. We'll go through some tactical things, see how the Dutch play and how we want to play. Fortunately for us, it's a game where if we win, we'll go through, so we still have that chance.
Silvia Neid, Germany coach
I think we didn't give Iceland a chance because we were always there, we were always working well against the ball because we gained possession quickly. The good thing was that we never let up so there was never even an inkling that we might concede. Therefore, I'm obviously very happy and glad that we've got these three points.
It was definitely important that we were very compact today and developed our game out of some strong pressure in midfield. We were always very close to our opponents and didn't let them have the chance to develop their game. Then the game starts to take place in your mind with one side getting stronger and the other getting weaker, and today it was the case that we got stronger because we were more active and aggressive, and we played really well going forward too.
Melanie Leupolz has improved a great deal over the time we've been together preparing. She has a great presence and is fantastic in the tackle. She's solid, persevering, quick and can play with her left and right foot. She's strong in the air and all she needs now is to gain more experience, then she's definitely going to get even better.
