Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Scots’ defiant Euro exit
GOALKEEPER Gemma Fay relished proving Scotland’s doubters wrong as the Scots bowed out of Euro 2017 with a 1-0 victory over Spain.
Caroline Weir’s first-half strike against the run of play was not quite enough to keep Scotland in the competition as they needed to beat Spain by at least two goals.
England had done their bit for the Scottish cause, beating Portugal 2-1 to top the group. An earlier loss by the same scoreline to the Portuguese proved too much for Scotland to overcome, however.
Fay took the opportunity to hit back at critics who had stacked the odds against Anna Signeul’s team, insisting the nation “can only get better”.
She added: “We said that there was more to come from us, when a lot of people had written us off. There were two people at our press conference on Wednesday, nobody gave us a chance.
“But you should never write off this badge. We fought. We could have had more than one tonight and we were inches off that one we needed.
“But I am so proud of the girls, of this team, I’m so proud to be Scottish.
“We’ve got a great bunch here. This team can only get better. If we do the right things at grass-roots level, strive to have that professional set-up, things can be great.”
Swedish coach Signeul, who will now step down as Scotland boss after 12 years in charge, is confident about the future of the national team.
“It was fantastic how we fought,” she said. “They are such small margins. We could have put it away also, we had some great chances.
“It has been so long that we wanted to get to this tournament that today we had everything to win and nothing to lose.”