Miguel Méndez: “We are aware of our potential, every year we will be better”

The national women’s basketball coach, Miguel Méndez, is clear that the current team “is a team that is growing” and that each year they will be “better”, even more so after living the experience of the World Cup in Berlin in which they debut this Friday and where the objective is to grow “throughout the championship” and “without looking much further than” winning each game.

“I always say that it is a team that is growing, for sure. Very important, young players are arriving, who are gaining competitive experience and who are beginning to experience situations that they have never experienced. I believe that every year we will be better, every appointment we will be a better team,” said Migue Méndez in an interview with Europa Press during the team’s concentration in Madrid.

For this reason, he is clear that “at the end of the World Cup the players will be better, in November they will be better.” “If we put it in two or three years, this team will improve and become bigger and bigger. We are aware of our potential, but also with great humility because just as we say that we have 5 NBA players, France has 12 or 13. Germany, which is our first rival, has 4 or 5 superstars,” he remarked.

“Just because we have five WNBA players does not mean that we are the same power or more of a world power than we were exactly a year ago. We are very clear about this and in this new scenario we are taking steps,” added the national coach.

Méndez has had to do the preparation without five players (Awa Fam, Raquel Carrera, María Conde, Megan Gustafson and Alicia Flórez), a situation that he was experiencing for the “first time”, while there are other teams that “are very used to doing it. The Galician insisted that there were “many players” and for this reason he focused on doing the job “in the most logical way”, trying to “advance situations” and “facilitating” them for when the absent ones were incorporated.

The man from Vigo referred to his work as a coach, which he combines with that of coach of the powerful Turkish Fenerbahce and which is “completely different.” “I think I am a much better club coach than a national team coach. I like to have everything well tied up and try to reproduce everything that can happen on the court in training and that takes a lot of time, which we don’t have here,” he reflected.

“The virtue that a coach has to have is to adapt to everything, both to your players and to these types of training conditions and time to train. We have to quickly get to playing and offer our best version,” he added. “Since I arrived in year 21, I have been doing new things every year, when it comes to recruiting players, working with the players, prioritizing different technical-tactical aspects because we don’t have time,” stressed the Galician.

“Even now, that we have had these four weeks before the championship, we see that we are very short on time. We would like to train many things that we are going to encounter, but we have to prioritize them. And I am doing this in a different way each time. In the windows that we have two or three days, imagine,” he continued in this regard.

In this sense, he considers it key that “there is a great relationship between all the components.” “That helps a lot. The fact that the veteran players help the young players and teach them what the national team is about with love and tranquility, helps a lot to make all the players want to be here. Not only do they want to, but they like it and make great efforts, and a very important commitment especially this year, which I am very grateful for,” she said.

The first match in the World Cup, this Friday, will be key since it is against the host Germany. “If we win, we hope he scores a lot,” admitted the coach. However, he insists on having “a general look at the path.” “What we want is for the team, as always, to grow throughout the championship,” he stressed, without forgetting a Mali that believes that it is a “team to take into account” and that Japan beat them in the 2024 Hungarian Olympic Qualifiers.

“They are three very strong teams, but if we talk about the other groups, I would say exactly the same. Practically, all the World Cup teams have a chance to beat you too if you are not at your level, it is a very cool championship,” he stated.

“I AM MUCH MORE INTERESTED IN THE SPORTS ASPECT OF ALBA TORRENS”

Furthermore, “of course” they are already thinking about Los Angeles 2028, with this World Cup giving out an Olympic ticket to the champion, although the Galician confesses that what really worries him is the 2027 Eurobasket that allows the Pre-Olympics to be played, but which could be without his WNBA players. “This year the competition is stopped because it is a World Cup, next year it won’t and there are players who are going to have to choose. That worries me a lot more, in the World Cup we will seek to win every game without looking much further ahead,” he explained.

The coach does not hide that the WNBA “is the league with the greatest deployment”, but that “depending a lot on the team you go to”, for an outside player “it can be more or less positive.” “We have very important players, like Raquel Carrera, who is one of the best Spanish players and who is practically not playing. In the NBA competition, if you don’t play, you don’t train either, because there are a lot of trips and there are a lot of games. Awa Fam was playing a lot of minutes until the arrival of a center,” he said.

For this occasion, the coach has also counted on the veteran Alba Torrens, the only survivor of the 2018 World Cup and who “is very important at the locker room level due to her experience and leadership”, but also for her level. “He was in the ideal Eurobasket quintet,” he explained.

“In Spain we are very given to this, to try to retire the players as soon as possible. You have a player who 12 months ago was one of the five best in the entire championship and we cannot forget that aspect. She also contributes a lot outside the locker room, in the relationship between the coaching staff and the players, she helps the young players as well, but I am much more interested in her sporting aspect. Alba is one of the best players,” he said about the Balearic forward.

“A NATURAL PROCESS” SINCE ITS ARRIVAL IN 2021

Méndez had to face a new stage after two championships in a row in 2021, the Eurobasket and the Tokyo Games, adverse, with the first one depriving the team of being in the next World Cup. The Galician, who took over from Lucas Mondelo, sees these almost five years as “a natural process.” “I think that in the work of any basketball coach, when you arrive at a new team it is because something has happened, a cycle is closed, there are bad results, because if not, it would not be changed,” he explained.

“This is part of our process. We all have a different way of doing things, there are many different ways of playing basketball. The coach is in charge of marking what is in this team and we have done everything from a very natural point of view. In the FEB there is a very good work in training as in the senior team for a long time. In training, medals are achieved every year with different coaches and what makes a lot of sense is the work that the regional federations and the FEB do in the process. And the coaches that we arrive We try to take advantage of that work a lot,” he warned.