Spanish steps

It's a new era for los Leones and their impressive coach Pablo Bouza - and only qualification for the 2027 World Cup will do

- FRANCISCO ISAAC

CANADA, ROMANIA, Samoa and Uruguay are just a few of the nations that have fallen to Spain in the last 12 months, with los Leones (the Lions) having finally found a path towards a new dawn under Pablo Bouza. The former Pumas forward, who worked as an assistant coach in Daniel Hourcade's Argentina staff in the 2010s, signed as Spain's head coach for their men's side with one goal in sight: to qualify for Australia 2027.

"The main goal is to qualify for the 2027 World Cup," he says, "and to achieve that we must create a team identity and have squad depth. In the 2024 Rugby Europe Championship, we had 39 players involved in the campaign, a high number, right? In the July and autumn windows, we rotated fewer players and that was due to now having a more distinct idea of who's part of the core team, our identity and mindset."

But how has Spain turned things around in such a short time? What changes were put in place?

"From the beginning, our focus was to devote more time to enhancing the players' physicality and conditioning, to make a bigger impact in the contact. The goal of the games against the Netherlands, Georgia and Romania in the REC was to see if the team had progressed well on those two fronts, and I think we did. In June, three weeks before Samoa and Tonga, we worked hard and had a great pre-season, which at the end of the line allowed us to have better results from the tour.

In his first year as a head coach, Bouza called on more than 50 players in what has been the hardest part of his job since taking the reins. “Team selection has been an ordeal. We’ve had setbacks as players say they can and want to come, but when the Test-match season starts, they suddenly can’t travel or be picked due to club commitments.