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Santiago Santos (60 years old) is a perfect connoisseur of Spanish rugby. After a brilliant stage as a player in the 1980s and 1990s, which led him to be capped 45 times, he hung up his boots in England and headed for another no less notorious life on the bench. He reached that of the absolute national team in 2013, after a few years in which the Federation had tried to reach the top of international rugby at the hands of foreign coaches.
What did you contribute to the team, perhaps a greater knowledge of the Spanish idiosyncrasy?
Here we have always had great technicians, regardless of where they came from. Each maestrillo has his booklet and I, without wanting to compare myself to anyone, do have a broad vision of Spanish rugby as a whole from all points of view.
This is a very complex sport, with many edges, and knowing them all helps a lot to be able to transmit them to the players and thus achieve success. I think my main merit has been knowing how to convey to the players what the Spanish team means and how important it is for our rugby.
Precisely that success would be encrypted in qualifying for a World Cup for the second time in history. The one in Wales was played in 1999, and today you can get it again if you beat Portugal at the Central de la Complutense.
The first thing I want to point out is that you should not sell the skin of the bear before hunting it. Now we are not thinking about qualifying for France 23, but about winning the game against the Portuguese. They are a very tough rival, who already beat us last year, and against whom we cannot trust.
Of course, but that does not mean that you cannot imagine what it would mean for Spanish rugby to reach the highest international event, with an unimaginable impact. Would it be a before and after for national rugby?
Without a doubt. Being in the same tournament as the best on the planet would help us to improve on a sporting level, to have a greater media impact, to increase the number of licenses, to get more sponsors, to get more attention from the institutions… doubt that it would be crucial for our development. But, as I say, now we don’t think about that but about beating Portugal.
Four years ago, Spain was already on the verge of qualifying for Japan 2019, but a series of unfortunate events (a surreal match in Belgium and unfortunate administrative irregularities) dashed all illusions. Have they already forgotten all that?
Of course, since this new World Cup cycle began we have been very focused on our goal and we have all rowed in the same direction. I’m not going to deny that we suffered a lot with all that and that many people lost faith in us, but that made us much tougher. It has been four years in which we have grown in adversity. Now we have a group of 50 players in which there are different lines of work depending on the positions and the captaincies. We all feel important and participate in what we do. Rugby teams are very complex organizations and leadership is more important than in other sports. I am very proud of this entire group, which knows how to suffer and where the atmosphere is unbeatable.
How does the team that played in Wales then compare to the one that could play in France next autumn, twenty-three years later?
Well, I insist that first you have to classify… Then, more than the selection itself at each moment, I would analyze the contexts. Because rugby today is no longer like it used to be. It has changed a lot both in the way of playing and in its structures. Professionalism was officially adopted in 1995 and the elite teams reached the 1999 World Cup with that condition while we were still semi-mateurs, so to speak. We had great players and a lot of good will, but we were far from the best. And if we move it to today, the gap remains the same, because the greats are super professionals while we are at a lower level. You just have to see that the teams of assistants they have are almost larger than those of players, since they travel with about twenty people, including video analysts, coaches, physical trainers, doctors, physios… In other words, they follow us outdoing media and quality, of course. We know that we are far from that hyper-professionalization of the ‘top’ teams, but our hope remains the same because we see that we are closer than before. The Spanish character is always there.
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