FRANCE 98 – Italy-France – A. Jacquet: “In the end the best team won”

“I feel utterly wiped out. It takes the coolest heads to win penalty shoot-outs. We stuck to our game-plan and didn’t lose our nerve. In the end the best team won. When you are playing against an opponent of that quality, you can’t afford to relax at all. You have to be completely alert to everything that’s happening on the pitch. We are delighted to have qualified, even though it did go to penalties. I think that for the first three-quarters of normal time, the FRANCE team was very focused in its approach, and showed great technical and tactical mastery. However, during extra time, it could have gone either way. ITALY played as we expected. We tried to find ways of surprising them. In training, we worked on some attacking ideas, but though they worked quite well we couldn’t convert them into goals. Bringing on TREZEGUET (20) and HENRY (12) seemed necessary because we had wasted clear attacking situations. They brought a breath of fresh air to the game but of course at the same time it disrupted our tactics a little bit. President Chirac came to see the team in the changing room to show that the whole country is behind the team. We are always delighted to see him and Prime Minister Jospin too. For the semi-final, we have a lot of respect for our opponent, whoever it will be. We will try to put in as complete a performance as we did today. FRANCE will train tomorrow, Saturday 4 July at 10h45 at Clairefontaine. The training session will be open to the media and there will be a press call at midday”.