Panama beat Australia 2-1 in the dying minutes to qualify for the final of the 2023 Maurice Revello Tournament.Here are the post-game reactions from the coaches and players of both teams.
Tony Vidmar (Australia head coach) :
"At half-time, I told the players to stay confident, believe and play well. But when we went into the second half, we stopped playing and that gave Panama the momentum.
Given that it's difficult to recover in two days, we'll see how each player is in terms of form. One thing's for sure: we're going to make some changes, and we'd have done the same if we'd gone to the final."
Noah Botic (Australia player) :
"We were in our game collectively. After we scored and after the cool-down, we relaxed a bit and gave them the chance to control the game.
On an individual level, there are always things I can improve on. Even though I scored the goal, I made a lot of mistakes. On a collective level, it's a defeat that hurts us a lot, but it will serve as a good lesson for the game ahead."
Jorge Dely Valdes (Panama head coach) :
"I'm very happy with this victory. It's historic for Panama. We're in the final and I'm very proud of that, on behalf of the staff and the people who work for the national team every day.
It's a final, and any team that takes part in a match like this wants to come out on top. Now we're going to follow the match between France and Mexico to find out who our opponents are. It doesn't matter, we're going to prepare for this match as assiduously and seriously as we have for all the previous ones."
Angel Orelien (Panama player) :
"We have a sense of pride, we played well and assimilated the coach's instructions. We played against a great opponent, we fought hard and got a good win.
We have faith and respect for the coach's tactical ideologies. We knew that Australia were going to have more of the ball. We put a lot of pressure on the ball carrier. They made two mistakes and we took advantage to equalise and then score the winning goal that takes us into the final of this tournament."