Egypt Assistant Coach Shawki Garib: We Were Better Than Italy

Egypt secured a fantastic result by defeating Italy 1-0 at the Confederations Cup on Friday. The win kept their hopes of qualifying for the knock-out stage of the competition alive and assistant coach Shawki Garib discussed the exciting game.

"We have done well against the world champions, It was a tactical match. Our concentration levels were very high," he explained in the post-match press conference in Johannesburg.

"We forced the Italian team to change their game. We recognize that Italy are the world champions and we have won and we were better than them for the 90 minutes."

Now, the Egyptians have a crunch match against the United States, who are already out of the tournament after losing their first two games.

"We are hopeful we can perform as well in the next match as we did today. We play simple football and we are very consistent. We have to recognize that we have played against two strong teams.

"This makes up for the last result [a 4-3 loss to Brazil]. We are level on points with Italy and we have equal chance to go through [to the next round]."

Striker Mohamed Zidan was removed due to injury in the second-half, but Garib insists that the striker is feeling no ill effects.

"Zidan’s injury is not serious. He felt a twinge in his muscles and he was taken off as a precaution," he explained in conclusion.

Adam Scime, Goal.com