Serbia's Zivković thinking positive

Serbia coach Zvonko Zivković was keen to look to the future despite his side's disappointing exit from the UEFA European Under-19 Championship in Austria.

Football philosophy
A 3-2 defeat against Germany in their final group fixture left Serbia in third position in Group B but Zivković highlighted the potential shown by his charges in Austria. "Our main aim is six or seven of the players from this squad will join the U21 set-up and in the next year or two will play for the senior national team," he said. "We wanted to show our philosophy and our development with young players and the youth national team so it's a success just to be here."

Coach convinced
Zivković had been in bullish mood ahead of the decisive game in Pasching, knowing his side had to take maximum points if they were to advance to the last four. "Of course we believe we can qualify for the semi-finals and I'm convinced we can win against Germany," he said. Unfortunately for Serbia they failed to build on the perfect start given to them by Miloš Bosančić's second-minute opener, eventually succumbing to goals from Anis Ben-Hatira, Max Kruse and Sidney Sam.

High and lows
Serbia's tournament certainly had its highs and lows, with a 5-2 loss against ten-man France followed two days later by a sensational 6-2 victory against Russia. Again, Zivković opted to take the positives, adding: "Against France we played very well for 35 minutes. We played as we had agreed in the dressing room. Then we conceded two quick goals and due to the heat we couldn't play at the same level after that. We talked a lot about the mistakes we made and managed to correct some of them against Russia. To score six times was a fantastic result for us."

'One good result'
Despite featuring the likes of highly-rated SC Heerenveen forward Miralem Sulejmani and FC Metz prodigy Ljubomir Fejsa in their ranks, Zivković also bemoaned having a lack of consistent quality available in his squad, saying: "In this competition it was a factor that we practically had to play with only 13 players as we don't have a huge pool to choose from, unlike France and Germany." However, when asked to summarise Serbia's topsy-turvy experience at the finals he added that just taking part was enough. "We are pleased that we were able to be here and play in this tournament with these great national teams," he concluded. "That was the one good result for us here."