In the Round of 16 of the European Championships, Skranicz opened the scoring, Bellingham equalized in stoppage time, and Kane scored the winning goal in extra time, ultimately sending Slovakia home after a 2-1 loss to England. After the match, Slovakia coach Calzona spoke to the media.
Calzona said: “I want to commend my players, because they played exactly as I asked them to. We were a little sloppy in the second half, but that’s to be expected against a team of this caliber. Then in extra time we just defended, we kept them out, I’m proud of the way we defended, and our goalkeeper played for time, I have to say that minute of added time the referee gave was too little. I’m definitely not happy with the referee, but we didn’t lose because of that. We lost because of a few moments of concentration, but I’m obviously very proud of my team, because we played our own style of football, we played a great game, and I think the Slovak people are proud of us too.”
“We knew we couldn’t leave gaps between our lines because everyone knows that Bellingham is a player with enormous talent. We kept things tight, we closed the gaps. We had a couple of chances in the first half to kill the game, or at least go 2-0 up. It’s a shame, if those chances had been taken, the game might have been completely different.”
“Seeing a team like England just wanting to defend in extra time shows how well we played, I’m proud of that. I’m really very proud of my players, we should have been the ones advancing.”
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