Raúl Jiménez: “Pablo and I are taking advantage of our starting positions to give our best performance in this U-17 World Cup”

The VCF Academy has double representation in the Spanish U-17 national team that is playing in the FIFA U-17 World Cup in Indonesia. So far, goalkeeper Raúl Jiménez (2006) and winger Pablo López (2006) have been protagonists with the national team, as they have been starters in the two matches played so far in which Spain has achieved victories.

Very close to the round of 16
It's still early days. We still have one game to go and the group is very close. But we have a slight advantage over Mali. We are happy with the team's work. We want to continue like this and not lose the rhythm.

Starter together with Pablo Lopez
We are very happy. We are taking advantage of the starting position and giving the maximum performance, which is what the coach wants.

A united group

On the second match we had more work to do. Mali's physicality was noticeable. The whole team worked hard in a very hard-fought match. You could see the team and the family we are forming, and what we are fighting for in this tournament.

Hard fight

We knew that Mali was a physically brutal team, but we knew how to suffer, which is necessary if we want to go far in this tournament. In many phases of the match it was obvious that they were physically superior to us, but our ball game is not comparable to any other team and we were able to handle it well to get the three points.

Winning mentality
We are fighting for it. We're taking it step by step and not getting ahead of ourselves, as it's still too early. But, we have a winning mentality and that can take us further. We are very focused and hopefully we will go far.

No break
We are already preparing for the match. We play every two days and there is almost no time to recover well. We already had the experience of the European Championship and we are adapting quite well. Uzbekistan is a strong opponent,