Jenni Hermoso: "I will never understand why I missed the first call. It will always hurt me"

Six later, Jenni Hermoso sat down again in a press room. A “stronger girl”, eager to play another final, this time against France. She does not deny that she has lived through “a long, hard process”, from which football has brought her back, but she does not forget that she missed the start of the Nations League due to the RFEF's desire to “protect” her. At least that's how it was explained then. “I was clear. I didn't understand it nor will I understand it. It hurt me, it will always hurt me, but it's over and for me the best thing is to be here again, wearing this shirt and in a final,” the player confessed.

Everything that happened has changed her “personally and as a footballer,” “but I am lucky to be able to experience a final again. We are privileged. I am happy and I feel good because football gives me the life I need,” she admits.

The selection has also changed. “It's more fluid, we have a clearer idea of the game we want to play and it's important that the player feels it, that she enjoys it on the field.”. I think we are more aware of what we can become. Before we didn't believe it so much. In that we have changed individually and as a group, what can I say if it has been shown that we are the best in the world,” she analyzed.

He tiptoed over his relationship with Montse Tomé after leaving her out of his first call, but was blunt when stating that “the group has always been united.”. Jenni Hermoso does not see a “ceiling” for this group. “Neither now nor the future, because very important young players are coming.

Hermoso did not stop remembering that they are another step away from making history again. “If we win, Spain will have done it again, the Spanish player will continue to advance in her projection because we are a mirror for the following generations,” he warned.

He knows France well. She met some of her players during her year in Paris, “an experience that didn't go well for me,” she acknowledged, and they all know that Les Bleus have resisted them for too long, but it is not an incentive to win this final. “We look forward to all the teams. I don't see myself leaving any other way. “It's the day to show that Spain won a World Cup,” said the goalscorer.

Tomé: “All 25 players are available”

Jenni Hermoso will be in Spain's eleven, but Montse Tomé will have to make two discards because, as she herself revealed, she already has the 25 players available. Tere Abelleira and Alexia Putellas have joined the group's work. “The work they have done has had a positive evolution. Yesterday they told me that 25 are available. Has it been agreed with Barça? It's something that I don't have to value.. “Alexia is well and focused,” he limited himself to acknowledging the coach, who is clear about how to create problems for France.

“We recognize ourselves as a team that wants to have the ball, that presses intensely and orderly. It is our hallmark. We want to have it right and know where to take it to do damage. In the Netherlands there were players who could make transitions for us and in France there are also very fast ones. We have to be attentive and attentive to these surveillances and transitions,” he warned.

In his footballers he does not see even a hint of relaxation after having qualified for the Paris Games. “It is impossible for us to be relaxed. Being in the Games was the goal we set for ourselves on the first day. The look of the footballers was exciting, but it is already achieved and now we compete in this final to win. We are surrounded by a lot of ambition and we have worked hard to be here,” he acknowledged..

“France is a great rival, we know its strengths, its weaknesses. We are all convinced that the team is not relaxed, but prepared and focused on what it must do.. “It's going to be a final with two very different essences of the game.”

Spain arrives with the experience of having played in a final while France is making its debut, but that will not give them an advantage. “We respect our rival a lot. In the entire classification it has been the team that has conceded the fewest goals but also the one that has scored the least despite having powerful players on the left wing, on the right wing…. We evaluate different scenarios depending on the structure they have. We can hurt them with the ball and take great care of ourselves to compensate for possible losses and avoid their quick exits. Being us, occupying the spaces, making them run without the ball, we can hurt them,” she noted.

If Spain were champions, and despite the fact that there are elections in the RFEF, Tomé could earn credit to sign his renewal and continue on the bench. “I don't think about her. This is the elite and I am focused only on the work we have been doing with my coaching staff,” he concluded. They know that, even though they are champions, their future is unknown.