European Football Cup 2008’s Weblog

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.