FRANCE 98 – Nigeria-Paraguay – B. Milutinovic: “Paraguay are lucky to have a goalkeeper like Chilavert”

“I would like to congratulate the PARAGUAY team for being second in our group, but I think our players tried really hard. I am very happy to finish first in group D. Tonight we had problems because four of our players had already been booked. We hope to be ready to play DENMARK at SAINT – DENIS and then to go on to the quarter finals in NANTES in July… We’re ready for DENMARK, it’s a team with a lot of experience. We’ll have to use all our strengths; that match should be different from tonight. We made so many changes because previously we had four players suspended, but we must protect our game. I was especially happy with the first half, and we could have scored before PARAGUAY’s second goal. That unbalanced us, and from then on, it was hard to get back into the game. PARAGUAY are lucky to have a goalkeeper like CHILAVERT (1). We had problems with OLISEH (15) and AMOKACHI (14), who was injured and could not play. The problem we had with AMOKACHI was not a big problem, but it was better for him not to play. I won’t say what the problem was, it was a private affair between us. Respect and dignity are always very important in football, anything else people say is not very important. We played our game, we tried hard and I don’t think it’s right to say that money had anything to do with our defeat. I only think of our team: just NIGERIA, Africa and ourselves.”