Sergent pleased with French resilience

Gérard Sergent, France coach

We will start preparations for the final immediately. The players will rest a lot and we will ensure that they rehydrate sufficiently. Most of our players train every day, they have an excellent physical preparation and are young. I am confident that they will be ready for Friday's final."

Lois Fidler, England coach
Every one of the players has come off the pitch and has no regrets, as they said they could not have given any more, and we'd all agree with that. Our players are very 'teamy' – they are quite resilient despite their young age. They have been working hard for a long time towards this, and therefore they would not give up easily. Key things go for and against you during games. On the day, the luck was with the French, although there were occasions where we were lucky. There are always areas to improve. We will now go away and work on this. I think they are a good side, and we are a good side, they had the edge today.

We now need to dig out another good performance and hopefully a victory against the Danish. We played them not so long ago as part of our build up programme and we have our point to prove. You can see the improvement over the years as the players get more experience at international matches. The standards get better and my job gets harder to prepare them for the next level which is U19. A tournament like this can only be beneficial and help making the seniors in a couple of years even stronger and better than they already are.