BARCELONA, 14 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Spanish rugby coach, Santi Santos, assured that the Spanish ‘Lions’ have a team to beat Romania in the match for the bronze medal of the Final Phase of the Rugby Europe Championship.
“We have a team to beat Romania and the satisfaction is getting it by playing a complete game, both in attack and defense, both in the first half and in the second. We like to win and we enjoy competing to win every international match,” he said in statements provided by the federation.
For Santos, success is “a journey and not a goal.” “We are working to reach our goal of qualifying for the next World Cup, but we want to enjoy the journey, and we enjoy it much more when we win,” he acknowledged.
However, against a Romania that is a level team, they want to continue growing through victory. “We are on a path to rebuild the team with a view to reaching 2025 in a position to fight to qualify for the 2027 World Cup in Australia. It is about improving both individually and collectively in each game,” he assessed.
“Against Romania we once again have the opportunity to continue growing. Beyond the specific problems that Romania may pose for us, the challenge we have is to continue improving the elements of the game that we are working on,” said the coach.
Santos and the ‘Leones’ will travel to Badajoz on Friday for the Final Phase, in which they will face Romania, a World Cup team that lost to Portugal in a similar way as Spain did.
“In attack we must improve our intensity of work when we are far from the ball. Reposition ourselves a second earlier, both the forwards and the three quarters. We must also continue to improve in reading the game to identify the dimension in which the defense is weakest in every moment,” he argued.
Another challenge in attack is winning your own ‘touches’ and being able to score five meters from the test line. “In defense we must consolidate what we showed against Portugal. Have good space occupation and be able to impose defensive pressure. Romania is a very physical team that seeks to break the defense by demolition. We have to be very tough in defensive contacts”, Santos acknowledged.