Michail Antonio - like the entire Claret and Blue Army - was left proud of his team's performance despite a 3-1 aggregate defeat to Bayer Leverkusen in the UEFA Europa League quarter-finals.
The West Ham United No9, who was at the centre of the Hammers' valiant display at London Stadium, opened the scoring after 13 minutes with a fantastic header, and truly had everyone believing another special night in east London was on the horizon.
He was involved in several battles throughout the evening, which included almost the entire Leverkusen back-line, while having another with Spanish referee José Maria Sánchez.
The Hammers flew out of the blocks, and for the vast majority of the game looked like they could be the side to hand a first defeat in 44 games to Die Werkself.
However, they were unable to further add to their advantage after a one-sided first half, with a late strike from Jeremie Frimpong ultimtely booking Leverkusen’s spot in the semi-finals.
“I thought we gave it our all and the fans can see that,” said Antonio. “They’re a quality team and now unbeaten in 44 matches but we put a lot of pressure on them.
“When you are looking to overturn a two-goal deficit you need to go after them and make sure you get an early goal as we did, and after that we created a couple of great opportunities but didn’t manage to take them and their goalkeeper managed to make some good saves. It just wasn’t meant to be today.
“We are proud of ourselves, proud of the team and to get to three consecutive quarter-finals is a great achievement.
“Now that we are out it [Europe], we will make sure we give everything to be in it next year."
On a night where ten yellow cards were brandished, referee Maria Sanchez was also at the centre of the action.
And Antonio, who was one of those players shown a yellow card, was left frustrated with the stop-start nature of the game and the lack of decisions his side got.
“I’m very disappointed because everything we gave and everything we did, we weren’t helped by a single decision all game and I feel some of the decisions might have changed the game,” Antonio added.
“When you play the game, you want decisions to go both ways but tonight they didn’t."
