Hugo Lloris maintained that France must avoid excuses after their dramatic penalty defeat by unfancied Switzerland.
The French captain, who had saved a penalty in normal time, watched on as Kylian Mbappe’s missed spot kick saw the European Championship favourites dumped out prematurely.
Lloris refused to blame Mbappe, who failed to scale his usual standards throughout the tournament, and claimed the squad did not do enough collectively to progress.
‘We win together, we lose together,’ Lloris said. ‘We are all responsible for being eliminated at this stage of the competition. There is no pointing fingers. We had to deal with injuries, but we have no right to make excuses.
‘We gave everything, we left it all out on the pitch. Penalties are a lottery. We did not have the luck. We will now need to manage the pain. At 3-1 we should have been able to close the match out.’
The forward apologised to his country in a heartfelt post on Instagram following the match.
He wrote: ‘Very difficult to turn the page. The sadness is immense after this elimination, we could not reach our goal. I’m sorry for this penalty. I wanted to help the team but I failed.
‘Finding sleep will be difficult but unfortunately it is the ups and downs of this sport that I love so much. I know you fans have been disappointed, but I still want to thank you for your support and for always believing in us.
‘The most important thing will be to get up even stronger for the next upcoming deadlines. Congratulations and good luck to Switzerland.’
Raphael Varane also refused to single out Mbappe and insisted his team had chances to put the game to bed in extra-time.
Speaking to TF1, the defender added: ‘It’s hugely disappointing. We completely messed up our first half. We reacted in the second half but then left them space and they came back.
‘Penalties are a lottery. We could have scored in extra time as we had the chances to do that. It will be calm in the dressing room and we’ll focus on our next objectives.’
France had topped the ‘group of death’ which contained Germany and Portugal while Switzerland had finished third in Group A, behind Italy and Wales.
The Swiss, who had never beaten France in a competitive fixture before Monday’s victory, will now play Spain in the quarter-finals.
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