Thomas Sinicki, Media365: Published on Wednesday, October 11, 2023 at 5:36 p.m.
The welcome was on par with the players of the Portuguese national team, who have been unveiled at this World Cup and who are still on their toes after the success against Fiji on Sunday evening. An entire country wakes up to rugby.
It was not surprising that the Portuguese team received the honor given its classification when it landed in Lisbon on Tuesday, two days after its historic victory over Fiji (24-23) to conclude the group stage of the World Cup. Despite the expected elimination, the Lobos finished their French campaign brilliantly against a team that will compete in the quarter-finals. There were approximately 1,000 fans on fire at the airport, as well as a fair amount of media.
Da Silva: “Give us the opportunity to work harder and we will win in Australia”
Starting with A Bola, the main Portuguese sports media, which especially collected the impressions of captain Thomas Appleton: “Having so many people behind us is simply brutal. We wanted to bring new people into rugby, to show what it can bring us.” Seeing so many people and new generations shows the impact. We are ambitious and have a lot of talent, we wanted to win another match… If we continue on this path, we can aim to achieve more. And federation president Carlos Amado da Silva goes even further. Driven by euphoria, and above all realizing that this is the right time to do it, he is now demanding resources: “Give us a national stadium, give us the opportunity to work harder, and we will win in Australia.” Promising!
The coach also announced that he has already appointed his next coach to replace the wizard Patrice Laguesquet, and that like the latter, he will be French to facilitate communication with players who play in France. In turn, MP Luis Pisarra mentioned a “big margin of progress”: “The team is very young, it really wants to learn and grow. Maybe we can ask World Rugby to have more competitive matches.” Without the Six Nations, Portugal effectively finds itself in a similar position to Georgia, the usual European seventh power. Which was just checked by the Portuguese (18-18) just over two weeks ago. He was actually in Toulouse, the scene of the attack against Fiji.
