By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Just hours after the defeat to Italy, one of the main medal contenders in Eurobasket 2022 returned home with empty hands. The shock of the Serbian national team was obvious and there’s still no explanation from their side about what happened in the game.
Vladimir Lucic, as the captain, talked to the media and he explained that the failure wights heavily on everyone in the team, first and foremost because of the chemistry that’s already built: “I think first of all the relationship we built as a team, the chemistry we had was extraordinary. We talked a lot last night… If you’re interested, I think we’re a team to be desired in terms of camaraderie and everything we went through during the summer. For this reason, the defeat falls even harder.”
Lucic didn’t accept any kind of excuses, or the high expectation from the media: “We didn’t follow the media as much as you think. In relation to the quality we had, the wishes and dreams to make a big result were realistic, hence the disappointment from ourselves and our expectations, not because of the image that was created around us”.
The Serb forward even addressed the reaction of Italian coach Gianmarco Pozzeco, when asked if coach Svetislav Pesic should have done something similar with the game slipping away: “I do not know. It is not the first time that a coach, in my opinion, provokes something in his team with a false reaction. It seemed that the Italians started to play better from that moment on. I don’t believe that Pozzeco contributed too much, even though it turned out that way”.