“It is bound to happen when both the teams are playing the sixth match in these weather conditions. I want to give credit to the Mali coach for the way he set his team up and they were tough,” the former Atletico de Madrid man commented. Shifting focus to the final on Saturday, a repeat of the Euro U17 final earlier this summer when the Spanish won via penalty shootouts, Denia assessed that his charges would need to step up their game. “We do have to prepare for the England match. We know they are a good side as we found out in the Euro U17 in Croatia. England have improved and we have to improve too from this game in order to play the final,” he concluded. Jonas Kokou Komla, the Mali coach seemed dejected by the ‘ghost-goal’ but took the defeat in his stride. “I cannot say anything about the referee. That is how football is. We played a good game, fast game but we couldn’t win. Till yesterday, we won matches but today we lost the match.” “Maybe that (the disallowed goal) would have given us the luck because after that we had time to score the goals. But Spain did play well,” said Komla. While England and Spain clash for the summit tie at the Vivekananda Yuvabharati Krirangan (Salt Lake Stadium) in Kolkata, 8 PM, the Third Place playoff between Brazil and Mali kicks off at 5 PM in the same venue on Saturday.
