The round of El Metro coaches arrived at Parque Batlle to speak with Diego Palacios, Tabaré’s Technical Director for the next season.
How is your coaching staff composed?
As for my co-workers, my assistant is Damián López. Jorge Lladó works in video editing, and the teacher will be Santiago Hartman with whom we meet again after I worked with him at Larre Borges, when I was Luis Pierri’s assistant. In turn, Juan Diego Ruglio and Maxi Hernández work on the statistics side.
How is the preparation of the team?
It is very good, we started a month before the official start of the practices with the almost complete squad, except for Facundo Medina who got in after the elimination of Urunday Universitario in the League and Ignacio Alessio who joined a week and a half ago. Previously, we even began to work with the club’s natives, both the U21s and the U23s and the club’s native chips, Juan Diego Couto and Matías Varela. I am very happy with the willingness to work and the effort that everyone has been making, which I expect from their returns at the end of the season.
Are you satisfied with the squad?
The club got what we wanted as a coaching staff on the cards, we argued and the board of directors understood it, gave us the right and we hired the team we wanted to have.
What led to the choice of Argentine Alessio as a foreigner?
After the fall of the contract with Daniels we understood that it was perhaps better not to find similar characteristics to the Daniels, we had already seen Nacho play here and previously we wanted to have him. We believe that he is a player who will fit in well with the team’s plan, firstly because he speaks Spanish, because we don’t have so many experienced players, which is what he has, having played in the first division of Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, with experience in the League. of the Americas, being a player with experience, trajectory, with a voice of command that we understood was something positive for the team and so far we are very happy and enthusiastic.
What reasons led to hiring Facundo Medina as an unnamed record?
We opted for Facundo Medina because when we started to arrange the subway tokens we realized that we might need a shooter and at the time that our last available to hire was Manuel Oyenard, who we understood could give us a lot of things from the intensity, athletics and his youth and desire to improve himself, we saw that there was the perfect space to have Facu who already had a past at the club, who we know is a shooter of a lot of class and quality for the division and for the structure of the team that we we have in mind it opens a lot of spaces for us, attracts a lot of defense and when it cannot make decisions and shots and assist the rest. We are very happy to have Facu in the team.
How were the friendlies?
We had three friendly games where we set the goal of having a high defensive intensity tone that at times we were able to meet them and at times not, like any preseason game, the legs wear out a little faster than normal but the moments that we were active and well of legs we were very good. Then we set ourselves the objective of trying to convey a little that the players know each other, that mistakes are made knowing each other and we are very happy with some points that we saw how they get to know each other and interact in basketball. I think very interesting things came out.
What do you think of the dispute form?
I think that like all coaches I would like a longer tournament, with more games, with more time to prepare the team and give it the forms that we like, but in the current conditions that we are going through a pandemic and the current moment that the country is experiencing is the tournament that can be played and always the tournament that can be played is set up in a fairly correct and attractive way.
Does it seem fair to you that it is played on a single court like the LUB was?
I think that actually Larre Borges is going to have more training and shots thrown in those hoops and that court is true but in the long run you play 11 games like the rest on that court and it seems to me that in the conditions that there is to play it’s the best thing to do and it’s okay. Putting that ahead is making an excuse, last year it was at CEFUBB, this year at Larre Borges and we, like the rest, are going to play 11 games at Larre Borges.
What are the objectives of Tabaré?
It is the 90 years of the club and its main objective is to play a better role in what has been done, to try to generate a competitive team, to be competitive against everyone, to grow in the championship and then the best that can come but clearly try to be a competitive team, try to raise our roof as the tournament progresses and hand in hand with this try to give opportunities to the players who are from the club, develop the human capital that the club has, as is the case. from Santiago Pernas, Guillermo Mussio, Matías Varela, Juan Diego Couto, Andrés García, Joaquín Lima, try a little for them to grow and at the same time achieve the best possible results.
What do you think are the favorite teams of this championship?
There are always positive and negative surprises, for investment surely Cordón, Larre Borges, August 25 and Lagomar are the ones who have put a little more budget on the table. Anyway, I am very happy with our team, how we put it together, how they train and I am convinced that these things will drive us to finish the tournament in a good way, we will build the best team until the end of the season and we will try be in the best moment to the point of caramel.
What would you say to the Tabaré fan?
We want the team to be fierce, to fight, for people to feel identified with the fighting spirit of the institution, that is, to accompany what the club is fighting in terms of institutional growth, the claw they put in to add to the works that makes the club and add from the social and infrastructure point of view. We are going to put that same claw and fight on the court and try to make them feel identified with the club, play a good basketball, nice to see that it allows us to get as high as possible that allows us to hit the blow and if it is not, demonstrate that we did not keep anything and we did our best.