Spain captain Raul was in confident mood when discussing his side’s chances for the EURO 2004 finals.
“Physically we are in optimum shape, we have been training really well and now we have to reflect that in the tournament itself,” the Real Madrid striker told a news conference.
“Apart from the injury to Michel (Salgado) we’ve had a very positive time here and we really believe that if we do things well we can beat any team in Portugal.
“Obviously if we don’t do that we’ll be on our way home, but there’s no doubt that we will be doing everything we can to fight for Spain and for Spanish football.”
Raul believes that the players have bonded as a result of their play-off victory over Norway.
“It is clear that we have a very important group of players here who have become even more united as a result of having to go through the difficult situation of a playoff against Norway at the end of last year. We are all confident that we can do well.”
“I really hope we can achieve something big this time, but at the moment we are just concentrating on the match against Russia because our performance in that game could end up conditioning the rest of the tournament.
“Our first objective is to make the quarter-finals, but we all hope that that will be just the first step on our way to a major success.”
Spain have been drawn alongside Russia, Greece and hosts Portugal in Group A.
