Six Nations, Italy-England, Quesada and Lamaro: “We should have done better”

A defeat with a very narrow margin that makes it almost impossible to understand whether the balance tips more towards regret or rather towards satisfaction. Italy loses 27-24 to England at the Olympic Stadium in Rome in the match on the first day of the Six Nations and the new Italian coach Gonzalo Quesada admits that what makes him “a little disappointed” with the result, but “also proud”, it was above all “the character of the team”. But, above all, “having seen the sadness for the final result emerge in the locker room, I liked the fact that no one was satisfied with a small defeat. But also the fact that none of us are sad.”

never so close

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The minor difference in history with England, in fact, would suggest a missed opportunity. “Seeing the team handle difficult situations, especially near our goal, describes what we would like to be,” says Quesada. “We wanted to get England to play the match we had prepared, but at the start of the second half the opposite happened and attacking without the ball is difficult. We have to do better in touch to get more balls and in the air: to attack we needed to take the ball from their foot play and organize ourselves to put pressure on them, but instead they almost always did it. It was very interesting to have produced quality balls and two very interesting tries and to have had a couple more in the second to attack.” All things considered, as a first outing, Quesada cannot be considered dissatisfied: “We’re not looking for alibis, we had little training to prepare for it, but we could have done better. And we can already see the things we need to focus on, because I’m sure that with one more week of work we can do even better. The only objective is to do better on a difficult pitch and against an opponent, Ireland, who is more complicated than today.”

Captain

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Captain Michele Lamaro is practically on the same wavelength: “The regret is strong, because when you get so close, you can’t be satisfied. We’ve had enough, we have to bring these games home. But there is also the awareness that the team shows consistency and passion, which is what interests us to build our path. There is a greater desire to be better, more dominant, to want to manage these matches, because when we are up by 10 points, we have to be more incisive, more decisive to maintain that advantage. We can’t give ourselves 20 minutes like at the start of the second half, where the execution fails and we can’t get out of our half of the pitch. They weren’t more physical, but more tactical, forcing us to play in our own half of the pitch and preventing us from coming out as we would have liked. Knowing how to play in complicated areas of the pitch, knowing how to absorb pressure and turn it onto the opponent is fundamental.”