De Marcos: “We must inspire hope from the beginning”

Óscar de Marcos has stressed the importance of Athletic Club starting the 2020-21 LaLiga season in a positive manner.

Athletic Club’s Friday night game against Granada CF (21:00 CET) kicks off the 2020-21 LaLiga Santander season and versatile full-back De Marcos appeared in Lezama’s press room to answer questions from the media ahead of the fixture.

“We have to inspire hope from the first game,” De Marcos said. “We ended last season in a bad way and now we have an opportunity to get that off our shoulders in the first fixture.

“They’re a good team and they’re tough. We’ll have to equal them or better them in terms of intensity if we want to get a good result.”

The forthcoming campaign is one which contains many incentives for Athletic, such as the unplayed Copa del Rey final and the Spanish Super Cup.

De Marcos emphasised setting short-term targets early on in order to better fight for other objectives later in the season.

“We have to go step-by-step, there’s a lot at stake. It’s very important to win the match on Friday,” De Marcos said.

“LaLiga is the main thing, and taking the pause until the second game into account, we must take it [the match against Granada] seriously and try to get some points on the board.”

De Marcos also revealed he has been impressed by the performances of the academy products who have joined the first team this pre-season.

“They’ve come on really well, they’ve had a great pre-season,” he added.

“This is Athletic’s strength. Being able to take players from the academy and maintaining a high level generates a lot of hope and excitement.”