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Wales will focus on own identity before Portugal - Coleman

2016-07-02 18:20:00 from:SNTV

Chris Coleman gave his thoughts after Wales produced a superb fightback to beat Belgium 3-1 in their Euro 2016 quarter final in Lille on Friday to reach the semi-finals of a major tournament for the first time.

SOUNDBITE: (English) Chris Coleman (Q: This is uncharted territory for a Welsh team. How do you keep a lid on the excitement or do you tap into it? What do you do for the next four days?)
"You're right. The whole experience for us is uncharted. 1958 was our last (tournament) a long long time (ago). All we can do, all I can do and all my staff can do with the players is to keep reiterating to them to never forget what it has taken for us to be here in this position, never forget what we've had to do, never forget our beliefs, our identity and what our vision is and we just need to stick to that because you can't always go into a game of football and control the result, you can only control your own performance. That's all we can do so that's all we're going to do between now and the next game which is Portugal. I would imagine that there are three million people back home going absolutely crazy and they deserve that. They deserve to be enjoying it. All through the campaign, we have never played it down when we're doing well and after five games in the (qualifying) campaign we were top and I said don't expect from us, get carried away and then we need to live up to that expectation and that's what we've done. I wouldn't say that if I didn't think the players, if I didn't think my team were good enough to get results or to perform. I know my team are good enough to perform against anybody. I knew that before tonight and I knew that before this competition. The fact that we're in the semi-final is absolutely fantastic but we have to approach this next game like we've always approached the other games and that's just to take care of our own performance."

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