Eriksen elated for Denmark

Denmark coach Bent Eriksen was delighted that his side overcame some early trepidation to come from behind and score a resounding win in the third-place play-off at the inaugural UEFA European Women's Under-17 Championship on Friday, and he hailed the impact of substitute Simone Boye Sørensen who turned the game in their favour. England coach Lois Fidler felt her side would have secured the victory had they taken their chances to extend an early advantage and believed that the physical demands of playing so soon after the extra-time defeat by France in the semi-final contributed to their downfall.

Bent Eriksen, Denmark coach 
Our girls were very nervous at the start and for the first twenty minutes. When we made a tactical change things started to go better and they started to relax a bit more. Victoria Black had to come off injured, although I had planned to bring in Simone Boye Sørensen, who missed the first match due to illness and had not completely recovered yet, anyway. She is normally in the starting lineup and when we had to make that change I took the risk to bring her on. We knew that we would have a chance down the wings, and both Simone on the right and Katrine Veje on the left did exactly what we needed to get behind the English defence.

Lois Fidler, England coach 
We were confident prior to the game that we could have gone away with the bronze medal. In the end it's all about putting away your chances and if you fail then you get punished. I think that was probably the difference between the two teams – had we scored the second goal, we would probably have won. When you are in this sort of environment, pushing to your limits, and then have to play additional time, this is undoubtedly going to have an emotional and physical impact on the players. The girls put everything into the game on Tuesday and I think the extra time played then might have been a factor today. The players were up for the game and knew they could get something out of it but in the end it was maybe a bit too much for them. But it was important to see how they responded and now we go away to reflect and look to move forward. There is a knife edge between winning and losing matches at this level. You need to convert your chances and sustain your tempo for the whole game – we have learned this lesson.

Simone Boye Sørensen, Denmark midfielder
I felt very good when I came on midway through the first half and it was amazing that I scored the equaliser immediately. We had prepared to play down the wings and today it worked very well for us.