Pepe and Cristiano Ronaldo shared an emotional moment at the end of Portugal’s 5-3 European Championship quarter-final against France after penalties.
Speaking in a ‘flash interview’ with TV channel ‘Sport’, the experienced 41-year-old centre-back was asked to explain the incident with the national team captain, but he chose to save that explanation for later. ‘It hurts to lose like that. It’s difficult to find words for what we did. For what we did, we deserved another result, but that’s football. Four days ago we were happy with the penalty, and now we are sad. We did the right thing to play with certain processes, but that’s football. We had two games with Slovenia and the Czech Republic, who play in the lower block, and these teams are difficult to counter, we tried to give them space and insist. Today everything will be more open. A different rhythm, like Turkey, who wanted to play against us in this competition. The hug means a lot… now is not the time, because it hurts a lot, and then we will have the opportunity to talk about it. We will have time to talk about my future, we will have to go through this enormous pain, we had the ability to overcome this evidence and now we must raise our heads,” the Portuguese began his words.
ON CNN PORTUGAL
Was this the last game for Portugal?
“That’s not important. I’ll have time to talk about my future. The most important thing is to congratulate my teammates for their dedication to the game, always executing the plan we had for the game, but that’s what football is – it’s cruel.”
Did the tears mean anything other than defeat?
“Yes, but I will have time to speak. We will have to go through this process of pain and sadness, which is part of it. We were all here with the goal of wanting to win, wanting to do the best for our country. The country, obviously we could not bring such joy to our people, but unfortunately this is football. Five days ago we won on penalties, today we lost, we must give strength to my teammates, because we are on a good path.”
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Source: CM Jornal
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