Delfouneso disappointment
Thursday, 22 July, 2010
Striker disappointed after goal ruled out against Dutch.
Nicholas Veevers in Caen
UEFA European U19 Championship
The Finals
Normandy, France
It seemed a harsh decision at the time, and several hours after the game England striker Nathan Delfouneso is still disappointed after his 'goal' against Holland was chalked off.
The Aston Villa man’s second half strike, as he controlled a Dean Parrett cross from the right before expertly turning his marker and tucking home past Dutch goalkeeper Jeroen Zoet, would have made it 1-1 in their second group encounter at the Euro 2010 Finals.
Delfouneso was already celebrating but the assistant referee's flag signalled an issue after he had spotted a handball and the goal was disallowed.
“I thought it was a perfectly good goal,” said Delfouneso after the game. “I haven’t seen the replays, so I don’t know what he gave it for.
“It didn’t touch me anywhere if he was saying handball, as I let the ball run across me, spun around and then just put it in the net. I thought I’d scored a perfectly good goal to make it 1-1, but the referee has disallowed it.
“We have a difficult task against France now, but we’ve got to be positive, get our heads up and be ready for that game on Saturday.”
Whilst this game didn’t bring a victory, Delfouneso felt there was an improvement on Sunday’s display against Austria and also believes there can be more to come from the Young Lions.
“We played some nice football at times, we upped the tempo and kept the ball better,” he added. “It’s just a shame that the goal was disallowed as we probably would have gone on and won the game from there.
“I still think we could have played much better, the first half was definitely not good enough in my opinion. In the second half, I thought we should at least have got a draw out of it.
“It’s only our second game, so we need to make sure we get ourselves recovered and then prepared for the game against France.”