The Portuguese under-19 soccer coach, Joaquim Milheiro, showed, on Saturday, “a lot of confidence” ahead of Sunday’s final against Italy, acknowledging the importance of the match against a well-known rival.
“This is one of the most important games of this generation, which we are going to want to play and I am very confident that we will be happy. We really, really want to be European champions”, guaranteed the Portuguese coach, in the preview. of the match, in audio provided by the Portuguese Football Federation.
Portugal and Italy, who met in the group stage, with the ‘quinas’ thrashing (5-1) a rival reduced to 10 players, meet again in the Eurocup final in Malta, in a match that starts at 20:00 on Sunday.
“Italy changed their strategy a bit, perhaps because they lost to Portugal and they had other rivals, with another organization. This morning we worked on the details and I think my players understood and know where to win,” added the Portuguese coach.
The coach once again underestimated the many absences that exist in this under-19 group, which played the Euro Cup without some of the players that were in the classification, explaining that the process, lengthened, has been done in recent years.
“In this team, throughout five years of development, it was very important to create this resilience process, living with different contexts of high difficulty. We were integrating different players, they had these experiences and all this environment created allows these players to grow. No, I’m not at all limited by the absence of eight, nine, 10 players,” he considered.
The coach also said that there is enormous affection from those who are not present, as well as recognition from the Portuguese people for the mentality of this team, made of “solidarity, commitment, identity and passion” in the way they play.
Finally, Joaquim Milheiro also recognized that in the group there is a notion of the demands of the game and warned that no one is a champion before their time.
“It is very important to be attentive to the demands of the game, we cannot fire rockets before the game, we have to maintain emotional balance, with the ability to control the pressure, which is high, but it is positive”, he justified.
The Benfica midfielder Diogo Prioste, who played three games in this Euro Cup, two of them as a starter, against Poland (2-0) and Malta (2-1), wants to take advantage of the opportunity of this Euro Cup, after not having had the possibility to compete in the championship of the previous level.
“Unfortunately we had Covid-19, which took away the possibility of playing in the Under-17 Euro Cup, but fortunately we continued our preparation and today we feel much better prepared to play in the Euro Cup final. I really want to win this title, without a doubt it will mark me and all my teammates in our career.
Source: TSF
