Turkey coach Fatih Terim claimed, for his side, there is “no limit to success” after they defeated Croatia on penalties to earn a semi-final meeting with Germany. Terim’s men looked to be on the way out when Ivan Klasnić struck in the penultimate minute of extra time, but Semih Şentürk restored parity with the last kick of the game. Turkey then triumphed in the shootout. Croatia coach Slaven Bilić said Turkey have the “X factor” after watching them hit back late on for the third successive match.

Fatih Terim, Turkey coach
I would like to congratulate the Croatia players and coach. They played well but that’s football. You should never give up until the final whistle, that’s what makes football interesting. I congratulate my players, too. Both sides could have won. I think we should be proud and I still haven’t been able to do any damage assessment. Emre Aşık, Tuncay Şanlı and Arda Turan are all suspended [for Germany] because they were booked here, and we have injured players. We have worked very hard over the last two years and deserve to be in this semi-final. If Croatia had won, I would have said they deserved it too, but I’m delighted we did it. I tell my players never to give up. I set them goals and tell them not to be afraid of losing. I think this team could do even better. If only we could have the injured players back, but even without them, we are special. There is something special about this team.

I hope the people enjoy it and I ask them not to make our joy someone else’s tragedy. No win is worth someone’s life, so I ask the Turkish people to enjoy themselves, celebrate and have fun but not to hurt anyone when they do it. To lose a victory in such a short period of time is a serious mental blow for any team – I thought we would have a chance in the shoot-out because of that. If you look at our run, we have always come back and that’s not easy. Let’s hope against Germany we can take the lead. There is no limit to our success. After Croatia scored, I saw players lying on the pitch and I told Arda to get the ball out of the goal and start again. I wasn’t giving up. We could have lost but there were things we could do about it. I always say there is much more we can do as a country of 70 million people and there is more success we can achieve. We seem to come back from the dead. We always do the hard thing, not the easy thing, which shows how good my team are. When you have footballers like this, you just don’t lose.

Slaven Bilić, Croatia coach
This was a good match and I would like to congratulate everyone who took part in it. The game had an incredible ending, the kind you can only find in football. If you sum it up after 120 minutes, we had more opportunities than Turkey. They obviously exerted some pressure on us for a while and were tough opponents but we have beaten better teams so far. We expected them to do all they could to equalise in the last minute or two. Of course, they weren’t bothered about conceding a second as they had to push up to equalise. We received the ball and launched a counterattack which ended in offside.

They didn’t wait for their players to go forward, there were only a couple of them up front, but there was a powerful shot which took a deflection and went in. This is the third match Turkey have won in this extreme manner and if they continue to be lucky and don’t give up, they might even reach the final. It is obvious that they have quality and the X factor which you need in football. Turkey have already shown they’re able to do anything. Having one less rest day than Germany is a handicap and extra time and penalties are also exhausting. They have a number of injured players and suspensions, but some might come back and they won’t give up.

Köbi Kuhn was “touched” by the show of gratitude his players made when they unfurled a banner saying “Merci Köbi” after the 2-0 defeat of Portugal that signalled the end of his seven-year spell as Switzerland coach. His mood contrasted with that of counterpart Luiz Felipe Scolari who said he had “made a mistake” not replacing all eleven players in his side, rather than eight, for this Group A finale. Fernando Meira, Miguel, Paulo Ferreira and Jorge Ribeiro were all booked, leaving Scolari concerned about the impact that might have in the knockout phase.

Köbi Kuhn, Switzerland coach
Of course I am extremely pleased [with the win] but there is also nostalgia because in the first two matches we deserved at least one point and, the way it looks now, we might have qualified for the quarter-finals. We are out but the team were able to make a gift to the fans who have always believed in them. We were excellent and I think this team will remain in their hearts. I didn’t know anything about the banner but was touched to receive this expression of gratitude. During my time in charge we have been through some dire straits but, all in all, it has been a wonderful period. The legacy that [new coach] Ottmar Hitzfeld will find is a respectable one. We have a very young team but also some experienced players. There is room for improvement and once they have more experience, they will be even better. I wish Hitzfeld all the best. Now I will just be a fan of Switzerland and I would like to receive the kind of gift the players gave to the crowd tonight.

Luiz Felipe Scolari, Portugal
I was making a calculation [about the changes from the Czech Republic game] and wanted to see who had played most during the season and who had been injured. I was trying to help the players. We played as I expected and had a few opportunities but we didn’t get the goal we wanted. Later we will see the consequences [of my selection]. I should have replaced eleven players rather than eight. We ran too many risks by putting in three or four players who had played in the previous games. In the next phase [bookings] carry on – only at the semi-finals do they get taken away – so we are taking chances now and I didn’t need to do that. I told my players not to complain, not to make any mistakes, because they would get cautions. I made a mistake because I should have substituted all eleven players. I didn’t change the tactics though. We had a striker [Hélder Postiga] who played more or less like Nuno Gomes. What we didn’t have was a midfielder like Deco. But even with all the changes, we played fairly well and created a few opportunities, though we didn’t take them. We could have gone to 4-4-2 but we decided to stick to the basics.

Turkey coach Fatih Terim insisted he and his players “never gave up hope” after the remarkable comeback against the Czech Republic which secured a place in the quarter-finals of UEFA EURO 2008™. However, for Karel Brückner’s Czech Republic – leading 2-0 with 15 minutes left and 2-1 with three minutes to play, before succumbing to two Nihat Kahveci goals – it was a night that will take “a long, long time” to forget.

Fatih Terim, Turkey coach
It wouldn’t have mattered if we’d lost 2-0 or 4-0, so we had to go for it. Even when everyone else was settling for penalties after we pulled level, I was signalling for the team to try for a third goal. We didn’t start well in the match because, simply put, we couldn’t. The Czechs played better than us in the first half. But even when things were going against us, we kept trying to play the right way. We never gave up hope and our performance in the second half was very good. I’m just very pleased to have a group of players who just don’t give up, who don’t stop until the final whistle.

We showed the world what we can do and we went on right to the very end. What was important for us is that we believed in ourselves. We have players suspended and injured for the quarter-finals, but we have good reserves. Hopefully in the next match we will play as well as we did late on – but right from the beginning. Our next opponents Croatia are a good team who beat Germany, but so are we, and we’re getting better with each passing day. We will go to Vienna for the game and let’s hope we stay there until 29 June.

Karel Brückner, Czech Republic coach
We tried to win the game from the start and exploit any space and we were initially successful in our approach. However, in the later stages we could certainly have made some better decisions. I felt we defended very well in the first half and our defence looked OK. At the start of the second period we came under a five-minute spell of immense pressure, but we came out of it unscathed and began to play more positively. The key factor was that we were in possession of the ball and went on to score a second. After that we had several chances to score but did not take them.

In the end we didn’t manage to defend our box and, at the highest level, it isn’t possible to play like that without being punished eventually. With only 15 minutes remaining, we lost it. They scored the first, then we made a mistake for the second and the third was a collapse from our point of view. When we were in the lead, it was only natural that we came under pressure and we had to anticipate that. The key is not to surrender to the pressure – and we did. It will take me a long, long time to get over this disappointment.