EL PARDO (MADRID), July 18 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The former basketball player and ‘Team Manager’ of the women’s team, Laia Palau, sees “a hopeful future” in Spanish women’s basketball because young women “are taking steps forward every day”, and recalled, in relation to the forced generational change they are facing, that in sports “nothing is forever”
“Our youngsters, not only in the lower categories as we have seen these days, but also people who are taking steps forward every day in their clubs, are increasingly prepared to be important in the senior category. We have to compete and we have to win because it is what puts you at the top is where we want to be and I think there is a hopeful future”, declared Palau this Monday after collecting the Barón de Güell Cup on behalf of the national team at the 2019 National Sports Awards.
The national team, which is immersed in a process of generational change, is on the right track for the former player, but it is necessary to do it well. “Life is like that, everything is cycles, and in the world of sports nothing is forever. Things have to change, and the better you do in those transits, the faster you can recover,” she explained.
The Catalan, who recently joined the national team as ‘Team Manager’, doesn’t miss the track much. “I like it, particularly with the national team, to see them from the outside. I’m a big fan of the team, I know them very well and I also understand that it’s no longer my place, so no problem”, confessed the award-winning international player.
Laia Palau was “extremely delighted to be able to form part of the team, be there and, if possible, help and push, even if it’s from the sideline” and sees “a lot of hope in a moment of reconstruction” that has already begun “on last summer”.
Spain will not have a major competition this summer and has already completed its summer tour, with the next objective being the matches that they will face between the end of 2022 and 2023. “Next year we have the qualification for the European Championship, which would qualify us for the Games and that is what we have ahead of us right now,” he assured.
At the 2019 National Sports Awards, presented at the Royal Palace of El Pardo, Laia Palau and Rudy Fernández collected the Barón Güell Cup for a year in which both teams won gold medals, European in the case of women and world in the of the masculine.
“It’s true that 2019 was a very good year for both teams and for society, after the pandemic, being able to receive this helps you continue. We have a summer with many things and I hope we can be here another year” , he concluded.