Barbara Bonansea and Elena Linari were the first to comment on the stinging exit from the Euros in England. After elimination at the group stage, confirmed after the 1-0 defeat to Belgium, the Juventus striker said “We're really sad to be out, this Euros started badly with the France first half, but then we reacted. Against Iceland and Belgium, we showed we were capable of winning but we weren’t able to finish them off and this has been our downfall. We played many games this year at Juventus, but I didn’t see any differences physically in these games. In the last two games, we’ve put teams under huge pressure and I didn’t see any issues with our fitness. Unfortunately, when the ball doesn’t want to go in, it doesn’t go in”.

“Expectations are important if we want to push on and become part of the big players; it’s right that there are expectations, especially now as we turn professional,” Roma defender Elena Linari said after the game. “We mustn’t look to run away from the expectations but learn how to manage them, face them, overcome them, and show what we are worth on the field of play. More than on one occasion, I have said that this group of players have given everything they have and I believe it’s the most important thing to do. We end the group stage with our conscious clear, despite finishing bottom. We need to look back at our mistakes and start again because World Cup qualification is just around the corner. If we don’t prepare ourselves in the best possible way then overcoming this defeat will be difficult”.

“There’s a huge amount of disappointment,” added Linari, “we’re really sad about being knocked out, I think at the start nobody was expecting it. We expected a lot from ourselves, maybe too much from this point of view, because in these three games, we have seen that Italy needs to bridge the gap, not necessarily with Belgium, but obviously with France. That game still haunts us and we’re upset too with the draw to Iceland. I don’t think we deserved to lose today, either, but we did and that’s knocked us out. We’ll go away and analyse the games and come back even stronger because we have some more decisive games coming up in September in a competition we love being in”.

Head Coach Milena Bertolini, meanwhile, tried to see the glass half-full: "We lost a game that we didn't deserve to lose. This evening, the girls gave everything they had. We deserved something more. We were probably just missing a bit of calmness, but the girls showed up and they played well. It's an important experience for us that will makes us stronger and better. We now turn the page looking to not repeat the same mistakes, analysing what we did and didn't do well".