UEFA.com works better on other browsers
For the best possible experience, we recommend using Chrome, Firefox or Microsoft Edge.

'All-or-nothing' win gives Czech Republic new hope

"We played the way we wanted to," said Czech Republic coach Jakub Dovalil after beating a Serbia side unable to handle the hosts' intensity according to Mladen Dodić.

The Czech players celebrate at full time
The Czech players celebrate at full time ©AFP/Getty Images

Jakub Dovalil, Czech Republic coach
It was an all-or-nothing game for us. Before it, I would have been happy with any kind of win, The players should get all the credit for the way they played. We played very well in the first half against Denmark, and we learned the lesson of that. We played the way we wanted to today.

Jan Kliment has produced two very good displays in this tournament. This one was topped off by a hat-trick, which doesn't happen very often, but I am really glad that he has achieved that. We were fully focused on this game with Serbia. Now, our third game [against Germany] is the most important of the group, and we'll have to see how things turn out.

Mladen Dodić, Serbia coach
The result says it all. The hosts were better in every aspect of the game and they deserved to win convincingly. Unfortunately we didn't have an answer to their intensity. The Czechs were extremely motivated and scored early. A lot of things didn't work in our game, it was a totally different team than against Germany. But now we are already focused on Denmark. Regardless of this defeat, we still have a chance to reach the semi-finals.

Czech Republic take Crossbar Challenge

Our team is an attacking one, but in order to be effective, we have to first perform in defence. Looking at the result and the chances they had, we obviously didn't do a good job at the back.

I still believe in my players. I've said it before: every team has quality and anyone can beat anyone. I expect we will not repeat the same mistakes we made today. Now we depend on other results as well, but I hope we will win against Denmark and achieve our objective.

Tomáš Kalas, Czech Republic defender
We knew that we had to win. We can celebrate for a couple of hours, but then we have to focus on Germany. We played really well and maybe Serbia didn't [but] we didn't let them play. We played really high up the pitch. I know Filip Djuričić – we had to pay attention to him and the other forwards. We took care of them throughout the game, and maybe that's why they didn't have any chances.

Marko Dmitrović, Serbia goalkeeper
It's simple. We deserved to lose. Four-nil is a fair result, because we were so bad today. I don't know what happened with our players. Before the game we had a plan, a strategy, but on the pitch there was a totally different team. Czech Republic were much, much better. They deserved to win and I want to congratulate all of their players and staff for this victory.  

I don't know exactly what went wrong. We have to keep on working hard, we have to keep going and we will analyse things tomorrow. If we win against Denmark, we have a good chance of progressing to the semi-finals. It's very hard to talk right now about what went wrong. We have to watch the highlights and the game again and get some stats.

We must recover well. We have another important game in three days. We have to rest. I believe in this team. We've worked hard in the past two and a half years to be in this tournament, to be among the best eight teams. We beat Spain, the best team in Europe, so we have quality. Today was bad, but we cannot play at 100 per cent all the time. I still believe in the team.