MADRID, 24 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Minister of Culture and Sports, Miquel Iceta, described the historic win (7-0) of the Spanish team in their debut at the Qatar 2022 World Cup against Costa Rica, played this Wednesday in Doha, as a “very good omen”, although He warned that the championship has just begun and “greater challenges remain.”
“It is a very good omen. The experts tell me that we started the World Cups at medium speed, and the coach himself said that ‘be careful, it has started’. Surely Germany will put us in some difficulty. We are in the group stage and then there are bigger challenges”, he said in the ‘Informative Breakfasts’ of Europa Press, sponsored by Altadis, Cepsa, Fujitsu, Ibercaja, KPMG, Telefónica and Veolia.
Miquel Iceta highlighted the leadership of the national coach, Luis Enrique, much discussed before the start of the World Cup by the squad list, and of which he highlighted that he is a “passionate person” and “convinced”, capable of transferring “healthy competitiveness” to the international ones.
“The challenge is not only to win but to participate with the conviction that the players are going to give the best of themselves, and they showed that yesterday. And that there were bad omens, that if the youngsters… what a pity. Honor to all of them. We enjoyed a good game, a comfortable victory, which we had and deserved,” he said.
Iceta revealed that he followed the game of ‘la Roja’ “in a canonical way” on the internet and twitter because he was in a meeting. “And when it was six to zero he was going to write ‘six goals six’, but a collaborator told me: ‘Wait it hasn’t finished’, and they scored seven,” explained the minister.
Likewise, the Minister of Culture and Sport regretted that the presence of King Felipe VI in Qatar supporting the Spanish team was called into question. “That the King of Spain is going to encourage the team is not debatable. Is there any doubt? There are people who said that, perhaps, he should have waited. I don’t want to contribute to a non-controversial one, which seems ridiculous to me”, he commented .
In this sense, he justified his absence from the box next to the King because this Wednesday the budgets were being discussed in Congress, and he was accompanied by the Secretary of State for Sport, José Manuel Franco, and announced that “without any doubt” he will travel to Qatar in the next matches to support Spain in the World Cup.
On the other hand, regarding the confrontation between the presidents of the RFEF, Luis Rubiales, and that of LaLiga, Javier Tebas, he said that he is “worried about everything”. “Based on the information we have, there are no grounds for criminal charges. Thanks to certain contributions that are obtained with audiovisual rights, we have the top-level football that we have and we finance other sports,” he said.
Iceta recalled that LaLiga is a private entity and the federations have a public status. “They are private entities and there are people who ask the ministry to interfere in entities that have their own statutes,” she stressed.