France-Croatia - D. Suker: "We gave our all. We had a chance to go through to the final"

09.07.98 00h41 CET

Zvonimir BOBAN (10):

"I wasn't ready to play this evening. That explains my lack of concentration. My left leg was really hurting. We're now going to play against THE NETHERLANDS and whatever happens we will have had a great World Cup".

 

Mario STANIC (13):

"For me, we didn't have the time to celebrate the goal we scored. In fact, we relaxed and that was fatal for us. Maybe we lacked the experience because it was our first World Cup. I congratulate my friend Lilian (THURAM) who is my team-mate at Parma. Lilian plays central defender for our club and he's the best in the world in that position. He doesn't play in the same position for the FRANCE team but he and Roberto CARLOS (6) are exceptional full backs. We want to finish third in our first World Cup. But it will be a difficult match".

 

Davor SUKER (9):

"We gave our all. We had a chance to go through to the final. It's going to take us a while to get used to the idea that we are not going to play on Sunday. We proved our technique and the quality of our game. I congratulate the referee. Regarding the match against THE NETHERLANDS we will be motivated and I pray that the Dutch won't be. It will be a difficult game, but it's better to end third than fourth".

 

Alijosa ASANOVIC (7):

"We were almost there. It's hard to say what happened. We haven't achieved our objective. It's true that I made a decisive pass but that doesn't mean much. It was good not to concede a goal early on. FRANCE is a good team but not an extraordinary one. Only details made the difference between the two teams. We're going to fight hard for the third place".

 

Slaven BILIC (6):

"We were ready. Everything was going smoothly. We now have to concentrate on the match on Saturday. If we'd have held on for 5 minutes more after SUKER (9) scored, we would have won".