Rossi: We must come back from this defeat

Individual errors caused Marco Rossi's team to concede three first-half goals in succumbing 3-0 to a dominant Croatia in their latest European Championship qualifier in Split.

"I'd like to say sorry for our performance, foremostly to the Hungarian fans who who travelled to watch the game", Rossi told media after the match "It was always possible that we could lose to Croatia but I can't accept the manner in which we suffered defeat. We knew the Croatians are better than us and that we could lose but it didn't need to happen this way. We need to analyse what happened and come back from this defeat. We need to rediscover our self-confidence because a very important match awaits us on Sunday. Everyone is responsible for this loss. There were four or five unbelievable individual mistakes, moreover multiple players erred (in the same passage of play). Talking honestly, I can't remember this kind of thing happening to a team of mine during my career and I can't find the words for today's match. We need to get over this defeat and play totally differently against Azerbaijan on Sunday. As for our chances against the others, it would be stupid to think that we could win in Wales with a display like this one; for that to happen, we'd need a totally different attitude from everyone".

Meanwhile, Zlatko Dalic, Croatia's head coach, thinks mistakes are simply part of football and that aside from the soft goals, his team fully deserved their victory.

"It wasn't an easy match but we played very well right from the very start of the game; we were aggressive and we attacked the opposition so my congratulations go to the whole team. We scored two goals very easily but we deserved oursuccess because we put a lot into winning the three points. We didn't play well in the second half and instead tried to conserve energy because we'd like to confirm our qualification against Wales in three days' time. Mistakes can always happen in football - in Budapest, we made the mistakes and here, our opponent has. The qualification campaign isn't over yet and I hope that we can put on a similar performance in Wales".