Barrling joy at 'history-making' Sweden

Sweden coach Calle Barrling was keen to congratulate his players on "making history" after they saw off Norway to reach the semi-finals of the UEFA European Women's Under-19 Championship and thus book their place at the FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup for the first time. His Norwegian counterpart Jarl Torske was bitterly disappointed as he reflected on a winless campaign marred by injuries and a lack of goals. "If you score one goal in three games you will not go through," he rued.

Calle Barrling, Sweden coach 
We have written history today because the Sweden U19 team have never reached the World Cup. We are very proud and beating a team like Norway is always good. All credit to them because they were at least as good as we were. Coming back after their injuries and everything, they still gave us a tough match for 90 minutes. I was very impressed by their spirit. I also want to say 'well done' to my players because we came from behind once again. On the other hand, we must improve and start our games better. It is not a physical or technical issue. It's a tactical problem. We have a very young team. Nearly everyone is born in 1991 and we don't have much experience. They know what they have to do but when the game starts, things change. I don't think we started the game very cleverly, so I had to make some positional changes after just 15 minutes.

In international football it's very important to score when you play well and today we played well in the last quarter of the first half and scored twice. The second half was more of a tactical game because the result was very important to us. We did not play very well offensively but we did not need to attack so much. I am very pleased with the way we defended in the second half. Of course we now have a chance to win the title but first we want to get to the final. Our main goal was to qualify for the World Cup and now we want to reach the final. France are a good team. Their first touch and the way they pass the ball is great. I am very impressed at the way they are educating their players at Clairefontaine and at their other academies.

Jarl Torske, Norway coach 
We completely controlled the game in the first 30 minutes, scored an early goal and had a few good chances. We were right on the spot and chasing goal number two. But then things didn't go so well. They scored, we got two injuries to our forwards and that upset us a little bit. After going behind right on half-time, we tried to come back and created some good chances but I never felt that we were going to turn the match around. Sweden controlled the game from that point and we did not have enough power for the last 30 minutes, so of course it's disappointing. It has not been our tournament.

Things started to go wrong after two minutes against Iceland with a disallowed goal, then our captain suffered a broken leg. Today we got more injuries, hit the post and bar. The margins are always very small in these tournaments – you need to be a bit lucky. Scoring has been a problem here. I showed the players some videos this morning of us scoring goals in the second qualifying round. This is how we can play, what we can do. We missed a good chance at the start of the game and I thought 'oh no, not again', but then Cecilie Pedersen scored and it was a relief. But to be honest if you score just one goal in three games you will not go through.