Australians shocked, Germans ecstatic

Monchengladbach, Sep 17 (UNI) "We are in a state of shock, we don't know how and why it happened to us, " said Australian coach Barry Dancer, adding 'the feeling of defeat has yet to sink in, we led 3-1 and lost, I don't know how many times it happened in the World Cup final'.

A thrilled German coach Bernhard Peters described his team's title win as the result of "emotional strength of the players" and said, "I always thought we had a chance of winning." "It is a great win for the young team, they showed great mental stregth. I always had belief in them, they came back from behind in the semi finals against Spain also," he added.

" We did not give up even when we were 1-3 down because I knew Australians had started committing mistakes and once we made it 2-3, I was confident that score will change," he said.

A distraught Aussie coach, however, made no excuses for his team's defeat though their main striker and 'player of the tournament' Jamie Dwyer did not play the final because of a hamstring injury. " We missed him but I am happy that other players rose to the occasion and played a great game, but the fact is that we lost after taking a big lead".

"This happened to us in 2002 also, we were close that time also but Germans came down to win in a very tight situation," he said, adding " There were couple of things that did not go well here.

There was loose marking of rival players in the circle and also Germans were given enough space to operate." Australian captain Brant Livemore said he is unable to comprehend as why " We lost, there is feeling of emptiness and shock because after taking 3-1, we thought the Cup was in our bag, but then missed it by inches or rather by centimeters".

Both gave credit to the Germans for their fight back and said "full credit to Germany, even after trailing 1-3 they kept coming, attacking".

Livemore was of the view that "German's three goal blitz came very fast and quick and gave us no time to think because we thought that three goals in the World cup were enough to win".

Three German players Philipp Crone, Bjoern Emmerling and Christopher, who were also present at the media conference were unanimous in their view that they were confident of winning the title as "after taking the 3-1 lead, Australians changed their tactics and committed mistakes, we were not afraid of losing because we were down and had no choice but to attack. The Aussies fell back and we took advantage of the situation" "We started pretty strong, like in semi finals we came back and put pressure on Australia in the second half. Though they scored one more goal in this session, but we believed in ourselves and were confident of getting back and once we reduced the margin, we knew we had a chance and made full use of that" They praised the crowd for their unstinted support. " It was just wonderful, they helped us a lot with their support throughout the tournament".

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