Willy Sagnol said he was proud of his Georgia team despite falling to a dramatic 3-1 defeat to Turkey in front of a hostile crowd in Dortmund.

Playing in their first ever match in a major international tournament, Georgia pushed Turkey all the way and had chances to level late on before Kerem Akturkoglu rolled home his side’s third with the last kick of the game.

“I think that when you lose it’s not very nice, but you know for my team the most important things were somewhere else, and we gave such a nice image of Georgian football. I think we can be proud.

Of course we had a lot of opportunities to score, probably as much as Turkey did, but that’s football. I don’t want to say that we are happy losers today but I think we can be proud of our performance. I’m sure in the future, in the next months and years, Georgia won’t lose this kind of game. We are in a learning process, but we want to learn in a good way”, - said Sagnol.

Georgia continue their debut European Championship campaign against the Czech Republic on Saturday.

“I can tell you on Saturday I"m convinced that we are going to provide the same kind of performance and I"m very excited already thinking about Saturday”, - added Willy Sagnol.