new
Euro 2016 >

Northern Ireland an 'ugly win' - Coleman

2016-06-26 17:27:00 from:SNTV

Reaction from Chris Coleman after Wales reached the quarter-finals of Euro 2016 by beating Northern Ireland 1-0 courtesy of an own goal by Gareth McAuley on Saturday.

SOUNDBITE: (English) Chris Coleman, Wales manager:
"We never played well at all today. But that's wasn't because.... it wasn't our fault. It was credit to Northern Ireland, who did what they do very well and that's making it very difficult for the opponents. So, I'm not going to take any credit away from my boys who attempted to do what we do well, but we weren't allowed to. So you have to give credit to the opposition. So it was an ugly win for us. But who cares. We've sat here before. Played very well and not got a result. It's a good sign from our lads that..... the three wins out of four we've had, we've had to win differently. That's a good sign for any team. But you've got to feel for my counterpart Michael. Michael O'Neill, who doing a fantastic job with Northern Ireland. You know they've lost only two games in the previous 15 I think, coming into this tournament. For a country the size of Northern Ireland that's (a) fantastic record. It won't make it any better for him tonight. He'll be.... Michael and his players and his staff. And the support they had is absolutely amazing as well. The same as ours. They'll be disappointed, but they've done brilliantly in the tournament, Northern Ireland. I wasn't looking forward to this game in a sense I knew it was going to be a tough one. It was going to be tough for different reasons and they never disappointed us, I thought. I thought Northern Ireland played well today. We never played as well as we could, but again, that's credit to Northern Ireland."

  • Standings
    • A
    • B
    • C
    • D
    • E
    • F
  • Top Scorers
Ranking Player Country GS (PEN)
Top 3 Teams of the Past EUROs
  • Year
  • Winners
  • Runner-up