Rossi: We were unlucky and we need to keep working hard

The Hungarian national team lost its undefeated home record in this European Championship qualifying campaign when Slovakia won 2-1 in the Groupama Arena on Thursday evening. After the match though, head coach Marco Rossi said he couldn't be critical of his players.

"Despite the defeat, my players can be praised for playing well, maybe even better than the Slovaks", Rossi stated. "We had more opportunities than our opponent, but we couldn't convert them and our guests took advantage of their situation. We have proven that we could match the Slovak national team and of course I do not want to undermine our opponent's abilities because we faced an excellent team of world-class players. We were unlucky, both in terms of the referee's decisions and injuries. After the enforced replacement of Lovrencsics, we had to take off Ádám Nagy and Kleinheisler also asked to be replaced. Near the end, Sallai also indicated he was in trouble. Unfortunately, we've lost two matches we thought we could win".

Regarding the future of the national team, Marco Rossi stated we must not give up our hopes of qualification and must continue to believe in the work we have done.

"We'll try to prove this in the next matches. From hereon, it will be very difficult but we have to believe in ourselves; this is the only way to be during the remaining three fixtures. There are still many matches left in the group and anything can happen; just think of Croatia's draw in Azerbaijan today. So, all is not lost, even if everything looks dark today for me and my players. We need to keep working and believing that our work will yield results”, Rossi concluded.

The Italian's counterpart, Slovakia head coach Pavel Hapal, claimed his team showed a completely different face to the one they displayed in a chastening 4-0 defeat to Croatia three days earlier, using their opportunities to good effect and their younger players also performing well.

"The team was motivated and the players wanted to show that defeat to Croatia was a one-off derailment and that they can play much better. We deserved the win because we performed well in defence and we used our chances effectively. We could have even scored a third goal if I think of Mak's great opportunity. Success also required a good goalkeeping performance and, of course, some luck, but that's also normal in football".