Spain captain Alex Corretja has defended his decision to pick Nicolas Almagro for the Davis Cup final after the holders were beaten 3-2 by Czech Republic when Almagro lost the decisive singles rubber to Radek Stepanek on Sunday.

Corretja, in his first year in charge, had to field questions about why he didn’t select Feliciano Lopez, whose big-serving style is seen as better suited to the zippy indoor court in Prague’s O2 arena than that of clay specialist Almagro.

Lopez himself was quoted as saying the day before the tie that he was surprised not to be picked along with David Ferrer but Corretja said he had no doubt he had made the right choice and would choose Almagro over Lopez again.

Almagro, the world number 11, lost in five sets to Czech number one Tomas Berdych on Friday, while fifth-ranked Ferrer won both his singles and Berdych and Stepanek beat Marc Lopez and Marcel Granollers in Saturday’s doubles.

“I don’t think we lost the tie because Nico played,” Corretja, unable to call on the injured Rafael Nadal,said.

“Having seen the way Nico played on Friday I still believe that he was the right person to play the final rubber.

“I am a fan of Feliciano Lopez in the sense that he has given a huge amount to the Davis Cup team in our country.

“He’s an excellent team-mate and an excellent friend and an excellent Davis Cup player and an excellent player on those courts but I have a huge number of reasons why I think Almagro had to play.”

Almagro turned in an error-strewn performance against Stepanek and although he briefly mounted a comeback to win the third set the Czech 33-year-old, ranked 31, had too much guile and experience for the younger Spaniard.

“Alex is there to take these kinds of decisions, they are not easy and you have to respect them,” 40th-ranked Lopez was quoted as saying in Spanish media.

“But on a technical level I don’t understand it. I thought I was going to play because this surface suits me very well.”

Corretja was unrepentant.

“As captain of Spain I try to cope with the situation as best I can and in the end we fought as hard as we could to win a Davis Cup final that eluded us by a tiny, tiny margin,” he said.

“If we played Czech Republic again tomorrow I would choose the same four players.”