• Loss means France will face Spain in last eight
• Sweden coach proud of team's performance
The France coach, Laurent Blanc, remains optimistic despite the 2-0 defeat to Sweden which means his side will face champions Spain in the quarter-finals of Euro 2012.
"We are disappointed of course, we wanted a different result, but the most important thing is we qualified for the quarter-finals. Even though Sweden played well, they are going home tomorrow," said Blanc. "We need to stay optimistic, we didn't make things easy for ourselves. It is not the easiest thing to play Spain at the moment, we have to be rested and need a really good performance to beat them."
Reflecting on Tuesday night's match, when goals from Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Sebastian Larsson condemned his side to defeat, Blanc said: "We were weak in certain areas of the pitch, too weak in the tackle. Sweden put everything into the game, they were better prepared physically and they have a player [Ibrahimovic] who can make the difference – a lot of factors that meant we couldn't win.
"I don't think we struggled going forward, we struggled at the back and in midfield. Sweden had a big physical impact. We hoped in the second half their intensity would drop but that wasn't the case. We conceded a lot of space but we also created a lot of chances so we could have had a 1-1, a 2-1 or even a 2-2."
The Sweden coach, Erik Hamren, was proud of his side's efforts on the night but disappointed to be departing the tournament at an early stage.
"Right now I have quite mixed feelings," he said. "We should be content after today's victory, we were up against a strong team, because they hadn't been beaten in 23 games. This shows what we were up against.
"We gave an incredibly good performance. We created a small margin which we perhaps didn't in the matches before, and you need those in order to win matches." Read More
انسخ الكود التالى و ضعه فى موقعك او مدونتك.
