Fernando Hierro has granted his first press conference as Spain coach.
This follows the sacking of Julen Lopetegui who left the Spain camp with a bitter farewell and is set to take a flight to Madrid and be presented as the new coach of Los Blancos in the next few days. Lopetegui said goodbye to the press chief Pablo Garcia Cuervo and reportedly entered a van accompanied by his assistant Pablo Sanz, the physical trainer Oscar Caro and the psychologist Juan Carlos Alvarez Campillo.
The Spanish FA replaced Julen Lopetegui with Fernando Hierro on Wednesday, and the new La Roja coach will have his first test in less than 48 hours in their opening game with Portugal. “It is a nice challenge and an exciting one, the circumstances are what they are and from now on I accept the responsibility bravely, it can’t be any other way,” Hierro said in his introductory press conference in Krasnodar where the team is based. “We have a group of players who have been together for two years to work towards the World Cup and I have been sporting director, so I understand the motivation is huge. We cannot alter two years of hard work in the coming days. Many of the staff are still with us and we’ve watched videos about the upcoming match, so we have to be intelligent and coherent.”
Hierro who made 89 appearances for Spain as a player, said he’s now focusing on Friday’s clash with Portugal, adding that the players are “excellent professionals” and mature people.
The former Real Madrid and Spain national team captain continued: “From now until the Portugal match, we don’t have the ability to change much. I have been at all the other training sessions and have been present day to day. We cannot change anything in two days. The key is to change as little as possible.”
The Spanish FA, Luis Rubiales who took the decision to fire Lopetegui, also addressed the media. “I thank Fernando Hierro for having accepted this enormous challenge and we put the national team in his hands,” Rubiales said. “We always said we wanted to alter as little as possible, so the replacement had to be someone who knows the players.”
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