Mini-Bleus have reason to celebrate

France coach François Blaquart was delighted as his team survived a late comeback for a 2-2 draw against Ukraine which takes them into the UEFA European Under-17 Championship semi-finals ahead of Germany, who were held 0-0 by Group A winners Spain to leave them facing a FIFA U-17 World Cup play-off against the Netherlands on Thursday.

UKRAINE 2-2 FRANCE
François Blaquart, France coach
Our main goal was to win the match, and as it developed it looked as though we'd succeeded by taking a 2-0 lead. But because the rain made the pitch slippery, it went to 2-2. But my players fought hard for the draw, and therefore I'm very proud of my players. And I don't think Ukraine deserved to win. During the match I really had to coach and stimulate the players, as after the hard-fought victory against Germany, they were getting tired towards the end. We now not only qualify for the semi-finals, but have also reached our main target before the tournament, and that was to finish in the top five and qualify for the World Cup in Korea. So we already have reason to celebrate.

Yuriy Moroz, Ukraine assistant coach
I first want to underline that the spectators have seen a very interesting match. The match can be divided into two parts. The first part was won by France 2-0 and the second part we also managed to win 2-0, with a 2-2 draw as the result. In the second half we made some substitutions and they helped us to score. Unfortunately we just were not able to score the third goal which could have helped us stay in the tournament. But our first aim was to learn from all this, and with all these experiences we did that. Although we are no longer part of the tournament unfortunately, we hope we can use the experience in the future to get better results.

SPAIN 0-0 GERMANY
Juan Santisteban, Spain coach
We have achieve one of our main tasks: qualification for the semi-finals. We are very happy about that and especially because we have qualified in a very difficult group, with strong teams like France, Germany and Ukraine. Now we will see what we can do in the semi-finals. I enjoyed the match today and I think that we produced a very good performance, especially in the second half. There were a lot of chances for both sides which means that both teams were focused on winning.

Paul Schomann, Germany coach
We are very sad about the result since it was not enough to go through the semi-finals. The game was excellent and I'm very proud of my team. The only thing we were missing was the the goal we deserved. I think we controlled the first and the second half and we should have won. Today we are very disappointed but we will keep our concentration and motivation for the fifth-place match because the players know that it will be not every day that they can play in a World Cup.