![\"Final](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1x1_spacer.png\" "\\"Final")
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Final push:<\/b> Coach Puig feels that emotions will play a crucial role when Spain takes on Germany in the final.
\n | Photo Credit: B. Jothi Ramalingam\n <\/p>\n
Almost every second child in Terrassa, situated in the autonomous region of Catalonia in northeastern Spain, plays hockey in school with utmost passion. It is that popular.<\/p>\n
Terrassa is home to nearly 10 hockey clubs, the most prominent being Club Egara, Atl\u00e8tic Terrassa, and CD Terrassa Hockey.<\/p>\n
Speaking on the sport\u2019s deep-rooted popularity, Spain\u2019s head coach, Oriol Puig Torras, during the ongoing FIH Junior Men\u2019s hockey World Cup, said: \u201cTerrassa is 20 minutes by car from Barcelona. When you walk on the streets in Terrassa, you can see children with a stick in their hand inside the bus. And almost always it\u2019s hockey.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite a hockey culture that spans more than a century, Spain has struggled to convert this popularity into global success. Puig attributed the lack of consistency to Spain\u2019s hockey ecosystem which remains constrained by finances.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s difficult because in our country, the budget for hockey is limited, as it is not a fully professional sport. It\u2019s not a hobby either, but it\u2019s more than a hobby. I\u2019d call it semi-professional because players don\u2019t earn a salary playing the sport. Maybe two or three players earn,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Puig also pointed to structural challenges. Unlike European rivals, Spain lacks regular, high-intensity competition.<\/p>\n
\u201cBelgium, Germany and the Netherlands play each other all year, almost every month. The distances are quite short. But for us to go to Belgium for one weekend, iis too expensive,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
Spain is known for their possession-based hockey built on short, slick passing and technical excellence rather than physicality. Looking ahead to the summit clash against Germany in the junior men\u2019s World Cup at the SDAT\u2013Mayor Radhakrishnan Stadium here on Sunday, Puig \u2014 in his second World Cup stint as head coach \u2014 admitted that it was a challenge.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s 60\u201340 in favour of Germany. Moreover, we have 15 Catalans in our team, who are not very tall or physical in their game. Germany, of course, is more physical than us. I think it all boils down to the emotions. We are looking forward to play in our maiden final,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Published – December 10, 2025 02:20 am IST<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Final push: Coach Puig feels that emotions will play a crucial role when Spain takes on Germany in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":622890,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5312],"tags":[2000,299,193619,193622,104,193620,193621],"class_list":{"0":"post-622889","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spain","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-fih-junior-mens-hockey-world-cup","11":"tag-mens-hockey-world-cup","12":"tag-spain","13":"tag-spain-eyes-its-maiden-title","14":"tag-spain-junior-mens-hockey-world-cup"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115691819957661384","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}