‘Nacho’ Quintana considers Spain among the favorites for the title

Coach of the women’s football team PanamaMexican Ignacio Quintana, he said this Wednesday at Aviles (Asturias)), where his team will play a friendly match against Spain this Thursday, who has “no doubt” that the Spanish national team will fight for the title in World Championship 2023, to be “one of the four who can be world champion”.

This was said at the press conference offered upon arrival in Asturias, a few moments before the training of Panama ahead of the friendly match as part of the preparations for World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.

The Mexico coach, who joined the Central American team in December 2020 with an eye on the World Cup process, said the Spanish team has “incredible” power, as they have shown at club and national level, they are “very well focused” and have “good structure”, which also “delights” the Panamanian players to be able to play against these opponents.

“Nothing better than playing against title contenders and trying to make the most of every minute,” he said Quintana eye Spain, a “very powerful” rival collectively and individually, which has players who were league champions champions, With more than 40 international matches under his belt, he believes “a lot” in his students’ “hunger for struggle and transcendence”.

The Spanish team has “many virtues, because they are very powerful one-on-one, which makes them very different from many European teams,” he commented. Quintana, who accepted the position of coach of Panama after working as an assistant in the women’s national team Nicaragua.

Panama, “very powerful in short distances”, warned Quintana, this Thursday will find Spain’s danger in the offensive aspect, with players like Alexia Putellas, who, although “inactive” for months, is a footballer who “doesn’t like You can’t give a meter, because you can create any kind of genius in any space”.

In the absence of incorporation in Arabia of defense Wendy Natis, found in Colombia With their team, América de Cali, which is fighting for the league, the other twenty-two members of the Panamanian team trained this afternoon on the field of the Suárez Puerta stadium, among them the main figures of the team, the goalkeeper Jenit danceand, a conjunction Martha Coxplayer Pachuca, and striker Riley Tanner, born in NOW and the daughter of Panamanian parents, a militant from Washington, and turned into the latest discovery of technicians.

Quintana, who since his arrival led the Panamanian team in 31 games, in which he achieved 17 wins, 12 losses and 2 draws, considers it a “success” that he qualified for the first time World, a turning point that crowns a process that is “not finished” in order to complete it with access to the World Cup.

In his opinion, the classification for world is the “beginning” of the development of women’s football in Panama after “many years of excellent work”, to which is added the possibility that opens FIFA by expanding the place to 32 teams, some in development like the one he leads, which finds in the World Cup “motivation for what is to come”.