Hard work pays off for Denmark

Denmark coach Henrik Lehm was breathing a sigh of relief after his team held arch-rivals Sweden 0-0 to qualify for the UEFA European Women's Under-19 Championship semi-finals as Group A runners-up behind Germany, who clinched top spot with a 4-0 victory that eliminated finals debutants Belgium and impressed winning coach Maren Meinert.

SWEDEN 0-0 DENMARK
Calle Barrling, Sweden coach
It was a typical tie between these two countries. I think they are two rather good teams, defending well with not so many chances. Maybe we created enough to score a goal, but Denmark also had one or two good chances. This is football, it is very close, I must congratulate Denmark on their good work. I think that Denmark have a chance of getting to the final, they are a very good team. We created enough chances to win all our three games, but we didn't finish and that is the most important thing in football. We created three good chances today and there were nine against Belgium. We have a lack of forwards.

Henrik Lehm, Denmark coach
First of all I am very happy of course. Danish ladies' soccer has come so close so many times, we've qualified and missed out - last year the seniors could have made the semi-finals with a draw against Finland and didn't do it. So for me it is very important today that we showed under pressure we could be professional, and I am so happy that we are in the semi-finals. It is a tough game, Sweden are very well organised and work very hard. Like in the first qualifying round where we met each other I knew it would be very important for us to get a draw, the girls worked very hard.

BELGIUM 0-4 GERMANY
Anne Noë, Belgium coach
Overall I can say that I am very proud of my team. Against a strong team like Germany we knew it would be extremely difficult for us. I told my players to take as much advantage as possible from today's game, to play their game and not to be afraid. In the first ten minutes we were overrun, we did not understand where our heads were. We could simply not get organised. Afterwards we managed to get more into the game, but unfortunately we conceded the first goal just before half-time. They obviously deserved to win today because they pushed very hard and put us in deep trouble. I am a bit sad with the 4-0 result as we deserved a bit better than that.

Maren Meinert, Germany coach
I am very happy with the performance of the team today. I think we have improved in each game. Today we did very well, and I am pleased with the way my players performed in the match, but I think we did not score enough considering the number of chances. We had to change a few things after the first two games and tried to speed up our build-up. This resulted in three clear chances in the first ten minutes. But we scored very late and this was the bad thing today. You always risk a counterattack with such teams, therefore it is important to score early. They have good attacking players and we ran into a dangerous counterattack in the first half. They had done very well in the first two games already. They were weaker from a physical point of view as they train less than we do in our league. But they have the skill to keep up with us.