PARIS, June 28 (Xinhua) -- French women's football team head coach Corinne Diacre said her team was not clinical in finishing and failed to make right decisions in the 2-1 quarterfinal loss to World Cup defending champions United States here on Friday.
Despite making 20 shooting attempts compared to their rivals' 10, the hosts could not convert that into their winning margin in the women's World Cup.
"When you lose a match, it shows that you don't do what you need to. Our game plan worked perfectly, but with regard to the way that we used the ball, we were not clinical in finishing and did not make the right decision. Technically we made mistakes," admitted Diacre at a press conference.
"When you are not 100 percent, it's already difficult against another side, but even more so against a team like US," she added.
Diacre said, "It felt our two halves on the pitch were very distinct from one and the other. We were a little bit more nervous in the opening 45 minutes, but girls were more relieved after the break. We did control the proceedings a little bit over the course and upped the tempo in the second period, but it was not enough tonight."
Diacre emphasized that "I am not the sort of person to give up".
"The FFF President has great confidence in me by giving me the long-term contract, and he will make the decision. But personally I still have a lot of work to do. There are certain things that we need to fine tune and work on together.
"It's a failure from footballing level. We are a long way off our target. I hope that we've attained something that we swear and won over the hearts and minds of the public. I hope this will help women's game once again go further into the next level despite everything we showed that we are too far off the US.
"I've never seen the US switch to a five-women backline, but it was not enough tonight. We produced good performance, but we didn't go through, so it can only be a failure," she pointed out.
France overcame the United States in an earlier friendly this year. For Diacre, "Friendly is quite different from competitive fixtures including the World Cup, and US in a tournament is nothing like a team you face in a friendly."
"I'm not looking for excuses, but coming up against US in quarterfinal as a host nation, it's by no means an easy draw.
"We did produce good performance. What's missing is a little bit more work. My staff and I have a number of different things to do. We have no regrets. We are going to weigh up consequences of this failure, and really analyze what has worked well and less well. We also need to let the pressure drop a little bit," Diacre noted.
"I said they shouldn't have any regrets apart from mistake on opening goal that we conceded. They did win something tonight. They won the hearts and minds of a number of people. When you go out as host nation, you're not happy. So they're sad. We had a lot of hope, but that's the way things go," she added.
