FRANCE 98 – Chile-Cameroon – J. Sierra: “Today I scored the most important goal of my life”

Chile-Cameroon – J. Sierra: “Today I scored the most important goal of my life”

23.06.98 20h03 CET

Ivan ZAMORANO, captain (9):

“Last night I dreamt that we’d qualified for the second round, and that we’d be playing BRAZIL. Of course, I’m overwhelmed by our historic qualification. We’re already focusing on the match against BRAZIL. I’ve played only once against the Seleçao team, and CHILE won. I don’t want to comment on Claude LE ROY’s statement about CAMEROON’s disallowed goal, I don’t really care. I want to thank all Chileans today, especially those in Santiago who will be celebrating our victory tonight with a huge carnival. This World Cup has definitely been the greatest experience of my life as a footballer.”

Javier MARGAS (5):

“I’m very happy but I never doubted we’d win: the team has always been very confident. It’s true we didn’t play a very good game, but this win will send us into the next round, which is what matters. The entire team is exhausted, the pitch was very hard. In fact I finished the game with a pulled muscle. CAMEROON finished with only nine players because they played an overly-violent game. There’s nothing more to add. Now we’ll have to concentrate on our match against BRAZIL which will be a very difficult game.”

Jose SIERRA (10):

“Today I scored the most important goal of my life. It is very important for our country for us to be in the second round of the World Cup, we’ve pleased millions of people. Our next challenge is to play a good match against the world champions. Whatever happens now will be icing on the cake. I don’t feel that the suspensions of VILLARROEL (15) and PARRAGUEZ (7) will disadvantage us much – the Chilean squad is made up of 22 great players.”

Pedro REYES (6):

“We really felt the physical presence of the Cameroonians in this very rough and stressful match. After they equalised, our coach warned us that ITALY was leading their match. This may explain the boost we gave to our defence. We didn’t want to take any thoughtless risks, especially as we were 11 playing against 10 Cameroonians. Our substitutes are going to be able to prove what they are capable of when we play BRAZIL, since three of our players have been suspended for the second round.”