“First of all, I’m happy that we won. We did everything for that. It’s a shame that it wasn’t a bigger difference, because we had chances. But it followed us throughout the qualification. If we had been more assertive in the end, we wouldn’t have ended up with four points . I believe we would have 11 to 13 points. Unfortunately, luck turned away from us a little bit. But the team has great strength and it showed today,” said Neumann
The Slovenians were put in the lead in the 11th minute by an emphatic Jeremy Bukovec, but at the end of the first half, Matěj Slováček equalized from close range.
After the change of sides, the Czechs turned the score around in the 28th minute thanks to David Drozd, whose goal was answered by Žan Janež, but Tomáš Vnuk decided the victory for the home team in the penultimate minute. Therefore, the visitors took third place in the basic group D behind Italy and Spain, which won Wednesday’s matchup unequivocally 4:0.
Fifty-three-year-old Neumann received a thunderous applause after his 247th match on the bench of the representative A-team. “I was very moved by that and it was hard to hold back tears. Thank you to the fans and of course the players who have been amazing throughout my career. Thank you to the entire implementation team, I could never have done it without them. We were a great group, we had a lot of amazing experiences. It’s been a tremendous ride,” Neumann said.
“It wasn’t easy, I was soft. I’m very happy that we managed to turn things around. I really wanted us to win,” added the 39-year-old Rešetár, who played 167 games for the national team and scored 91 goals.
