The Real Madrid coach, Chus Mateo, honored former player Rafael Rullán, who died this Sunday and who described as a “historical”, but from which he highlighted above all his personal facet.
“I want to make a tribute meaning to Rafa Rullán, one of the historical of our basketball whom I was fortunate to meet and a good person. He was a Real Madrid player, who won 14 leagues but above all he was a magnificent person,” he explained in the press room after his team’s victory against Valencia.
The coach said that current basketball cannot be understood without the generation of which Rullán was part. “It is one of the pioneers that we have all learned, with whom we feel the cold of the cement of the stands of the sports city where they left us images for memory.” Mateo said Rullán and others taught, in addition to the game, “Real Madrid values, what this team is.”
On the victory against Valencia Basket, Mateo was satisfied by the reaction of his team after the elimination in the Euroleague and highlighted the difficulty of having linked eighteen victories in the ACB, although he said that this assures them nothing and asked his team to read the final stretch of the Endesa League.
“It was a encounter that was difficult for us in the mental with all the maelstrom of the EuroLiga rooms and before a rival of the Valencia entity and we have solved the ballot quite well. We have been able to see where the game was going and in the second part we have reduced our losses and its percentages that were being too high in shooting of two,” he said at the subsequent press conference.
“We have a very difficult league end. Making 18 in a row is not easy but it does not guarantee anything and we know that we must be prepared,” he said.
The coach predicted that they will be long for not being accustomed to playing a game per week. “I hope we understand how we have to train and we must organize to recover some players that we need at the best possible level but we know that we will lose competitive level because we have won it based on falling and getting up,” he said.
Mateo was happy for the performance of the Dominican Andrés Feliz, who said he has worked “frankly well” since he arrived but has been weighed by the difficulties of integrating into a team of his level and for some injury.
“I hope I maintain the level because it gives us a lot. It puts unlikely baskets for its physique, is directing very well and is defending very well,” he concluded.
