Saturday 08 October 2016, 20:34

Quotes: Paraguay-Ghana

Evans Adotey, Ghana coach** **We had a poor start to this tournament, but we recovered and we’ve managed to pick up six points in a really tough group and qualify for the quarter-finals. This is a great achievement for us. My job has consisted of mentally preparing and encouraging my players. We knew Paraguay would be difficult opponents because, although they’d had two heavy defeats, they were going to come out and try to end the tournament on a positive note. And so it wasn’t all that surprising for us that at half time the score was still 0-0. Sandra, our captain, can score goals from all over the pitch and she showed that again today. I’m very proud of her. I still don’t have any information about Korea DPR, the team we’re facing in the quarters, but as they finished top of Group C, we’ll clearly have to be well-prepared.

Nelson Basualdo, Paraguay coach**  **It was a close game. We both had chances, but we fell away a little - physically speaking - in the second half and that cost us the match. We’re upset because we came here with high hopes and we didn’t do ourselves justice. We’re a little sad because we weren’t even able to earn a point, but I’m happy with my players' overall performance today. They put in a huge effort. We’ve been improving gradually. The pace at a World Cup is very intense; teams play with a lot of speed and accuracy. Now I simply want to keep encouraging my players to keep at it and to keep improving, so that they have the opportunity of doing better at future tournaments.