
Nothing worked for us. We fell into the same situation during the first match against Nigeria. Our players who had been asked to play up confused speed and haste with positioning errors that were fatal.
Our disappointment is huge all, because these are the first two defeats since we assumed leadership of the team. And it was at the crucial moment as the team sunk. We will raise our heads up and play for honour in the third match against Egypt.
Our victory is not accidental. It came with a strict organization. The players did the job. We saw that Mali descended physically. We had times when we were less physical. Fortunately, the first goal allowed players to break free.
We take each match one after the other, and we will not start talking about the semi-finals now because we are not there. We will prepare for our next match against Nigeria. We will let players rest and allow medical staff to do their job and tomorrow we will know where we are with the physical state of the team. I had already said that two days of recovery between matches was very little for these young players. An extra day would have been ideal.