In the opening match of Group D, Los Pumas had a poor debut in the start of the World Cup in France and lost 27-10 to England at Stade Vélodrome in Marseille, despite playing with numerical advantage due to the expulsion of Tom Curry. After the game, Felipe Contepomi, backs coach, spoke on Scrum Mundial. Relive the match on Star+.
Michael Cheika's advisor provided his perspective on the game against the Roses and stated, "We didn't play well, I think we failed strategically, we couldn't do what we said or wanted to do, and I think this is a big yes, but if you learn from this, you can get back on track. I don't think we're convinced of the way we want to play or what we want to do, but we have to improve the execution of those things, the truth is that we had a very bad match today." For the former Puma, the key was the lack of experience in this type of competition. "When you train, you don't train at this intensity, for some it's their first World Cup and in a World Cup everything increases by 15, 20%, the intensity of everything, the crowd, the field, how you play, the opponents," he added.
When it comes to self-criticism, Contepomi revealed the steps to follow. "Each one of us will have to do introspection and see what things we can do or what solution we find to the things we want to do individually. We're not going to change our game plan or the planning of the things we have in mind for the World Cup," he said. He also added, "I'm not worried about anything, there were basic mistakes and in those mistakes lies the introspection to see how they can be improved, because the accumulation of those mistakes adds up and it starts to become a disaster."
Regarding the opponent, the 46-year-old coach explained, "England set up the game we imagined, but they did it very well, we couldn't counteract that, which was going to be territory, trying not to give them penalties to prevent them from getting into our field, they were going to make heavy use of kicking. I'm frustrated for not doing what we wanted to do, beyond not being able to counteract England, we couldn't impose our style of play and theirs came out perfectly." In addition, regarding the problems caused by the English pressure on the first receiver, the backs coach assured, "Surely it's my fault that in preparing them we haven't played as much, contact speed, and the like, going from training at a level that I call two, which is catching and putting the body in front as we saw today from England, there's a big difference and maybe on that side there could have been something that we as coaches will also rethink to see if there's a methodology to improve."
Finally, he cleared up doubts about how they will face the upcoming days in France 2023. "It would seem crazy to want to change something in the middle of the World Cup. The toughness doesn't come from the result, because we never talk about results, but from not being able to impose our conditions and that's where the frustration comes from. Winning or losing wouldn't have changed anything for us on the path or process in that World Cup. Now you have to win all six, but ask the soccer team that lost the first match and became world champion or England in 2007 when they lost 31-0 to South Africa and ended up playing the final, the result in the first match is not the most important thing, it's the way because we couldn't unfold our game plan and that's what we want to reverse, we have to want the next match against Samoa," he concluded.