Roberto Menichelli, Italy coach

First of all I want to congratulate Portugal; they are a great team and our victory is worth more given our opponents’ strength. I’m very happy for my players; I think they deserve to play in a UEFA Futsal EURO semi-final for what they have done, in particular in the last year.

Maybe there was no particular reason for this victory. Maybe the fact we continued to push also when they equalised. The players on the pitch had the strength to believe they could win this game. They kept their concentration and determination – the basis of every success in sport. I think the motivational aspect carries a weight that you must pair with technical ability.

Two years ago there was for sure sadness when we didn’t get past the quarter-finals. This makes up for the last European Championship but I didn’t think of that a lot. What counts in sport is what is coming up next. Tonight we will think of this beautiful day we have experienced, then tomorrow morning we will start work again for another contest. Fortunately, we will play five matches here – that is what we wanted.

Alessandro Patias, Italy goalscorer
This is a very important victory. We knew that our path would get even harder after having been beaten by Russia to first place in Group C, even though we were aware that all challenges are difficult. We knew we had a very difficult game. We have faced Portugal many times and they are a great team. At the end, with pain, anger and will, we succeeded in obtaining a positive result and reaching the semi-finals.

We all had a lot of chances, not only me, but unfortunately we could not convert them earlier on. In the end, after we had been through so much, I scored the third goal, and that was very important. I scored, but the most important thing is Italy won.

Stefano Mammarella, Italy goalkeeper
This is a very great satisfaction, achieving this result at the European Championship. This squad truly deserves it. We were united and we had the power to beat Portugal. We played a great match even if we wasted too many chances. We really wanted this result. What happened on the pitch showed we were better than them; we won 3-1 and everyone’s performance was exceptional. We were completely determined to reach the semi-finals.

On Thursday we have Spain. This is a tournament which is played over ten days, and we don’t have time to rest, but beating Portugal in the quarter-finals will give us the confidence to face Spain and to put in another great performance. We have a chance to win, because we are united and we want to do well. It is a ‘do or die’ game, 50-50, even if Spain have incredible talent.

Jorge Braz, Portugal coach
There were some mistakes at important moments of the game, that’s the reason for this result. We could have scored again later on, and it might have been another game; we would have been in control, gained confidence. That’s too bad.

I’m the leader, I take the blame; there is no need to seach for who is guilty. I’m the leader of this team, they’ve been a fantastic team, a great team over these three weeks; great behaviour, they did everything they could do. They prepared well and had two – three – good games. But it was not enough.I am very, very, very disappointed, the biggest disappointment of my life.

João Benedito, Portugal goalkeeper
There is not much to say and it is very difficult for me to try to analyse the match in a cold and rational way. We are very down and it is way too early for us to put aside what we are feeling and to talk about what exactly went wrong. We had our chances to score and they had theirs.

It was a very even and tight game but unfortunately we failed once again. We are sad, that is true, but we will learn from what happened here, we will lift our heads and start to think about our next battles. We will do everything in our power so this won’t happen again.

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