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Danes down and out in Agueda

Denmark midfielder Thomas Kahlenberg said "stupid goals" cost his side as they bowed out of the tournament after their 2-1 loss to Ukraine.

Denmark midfielder Thomas Kahlenberg said "stupid goals" cost his side as they bowed out of the UEFA European Under-21 Championship following a 2-1 defeat by Ukraine in Agueda. "The luck wasn't on our side tonight," he told uefa.com. "We had chances, but unfortunately we conceded two stupid goals that cost us the win. They took the lead when it was supposed to be us and though we equalised, we had all of the second half to win the game. We had our chances and couldn't take them."

Bright start
Denmark had started brightly but fell behind against the run of play on 31 minutes when Ruslan Fomin knocked in a rebound after goalkeeper Kevin Stuhr Ellegaard had failed to hold Taras Mikhalik's shot. Kahlenberg replied for Denmark with his third goal in as many games two minutes before the break, but Artem Milevskiy's late strike ended Danish hopes. "Being top scorer doesn't matter as we felt we were good enough to go further in this competition," Kahlenberg said. "But we are left disappointed as we leave here when we just wanted to stay."

'Control'
Ellegaard added: "We had everything under control but I made a mistake for their first goal. Nevertheless, we didn't take our chances, especially in the second half when it was only us in attack. We missed that bit of luck as on the night we just weren't [accurate] enough in front of goal. You cannot say that teams have scored good goals against us as we gifted teams some stupid goals. Before this match we could have even been in a better position and when you consider that we have beaten them [twice] before in qualifying, we were not good enough today."

'Disappointed'
Rasmus Würtz, a rock in the Danes' midfield throughout this tournament, believed his side paid the price for not taking their opportunities. "You cannot create that many chances and not score," he said. "We kept the pressure on throughout the 90 minutes but we conceded two soft goals. They scored first and that made it all the better for them as they could sit back and defend as well as hitting us on the counter. I thought we did well to equalise and come back into the game, but we are obviously disappointed. This is now over for us and I don't know what we can really take out of it. We played attractive football throughout the competition but we just didn't have the luck in those key situations."

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