Imanol Alguacil is extremely attracted to winning for the third time at the Santiago Bernabéu as coach. He has also experienced such pleasure as a footballer, even scoring a goal, so no one knows better what he feels. “It’s a nice challenge to be able to enter history,” he proclaims.
“There will be very few players” who have won three times at the Bernabéu. Imanol establishes a simile. “I always think that I’m going to win the next one and when we go to Barcelona, the same thing, even though we haven’t won there for so long,” he admits.
To annul Real Madrid, Imanol believes that the secret lies in “being effective”, in addition to “they don’t put in the chances they have, which they usually have in positional play and transitions”.
The Real match has to be complete, in Imanol’s opinion. “You have to do everything,” he says, explaining that “96-98 minutes are being played and they go a long way.” He points out that of Orio that “the tiredness is going to be there” and stresses that “if we want to press up high, we will need to be fresh”. In this sense, “I am clear that within the nuances, the team has to know how to adapt” to “the moments” of the stake.
The danger of Real Madrid is clear. “They do things that the coach doesn’t even ask of them,” warns Imanol, emphasizing their “brutal individual quality” and the “world-winning personality” they possess. The coach confirms that “if there is a team capable of winning there, it is us”, he justifies that “we have shown it” and for this reason he is clear that “they will be very involved in the match, with all their senses on”, despite that immediately afterwards they risk their future in Europe against PSG.