Argentina’s Italy coach Gonzalo Quesada assured his players from the final whistle of their narrow defeat against England (27-24) on Saturday in Rome that they could “do even better” against Ireland on next weekend. “It will be even harder in Dublin for our next match (February 11) against this Irish team which scored almost 40 points against France (38-17, Editor’s note), but we must play even better,” said he declared at a press conference.
“We know we could have done better against England. We’re not looking for excuses, but we haven’t had a lot of training to prepare for this match (…) I’m sure that with an extra week of training we can do better, even against “Ireland”, underlined the former Argentina international.
For his debut at the head of the Nazionale, Quesada, who succeeded New Zealander Kirean Crowley after the last World Cup, said he was “disappointed by the result but proud of (his) players”. “What I liked was that I didn’t see any players after the match who were satisfied with this narrow defeat,” he insisted.
“In the second half, England deprived us of the ball and it was more difficult. There is a bit of everything to improve, but what is interesting is that we scored two good tries in the first half and that we showed at times the team we wanted to be,” he said. -he concluded. Italy has never beaten England in 31 matches. She has finished in 6th and last place in every Six Nations Tournament since 2016.
