By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
FC Bayern Munich head coach Andrea Trinchieri and Sports Director Daniele Baiesi criticized the decision of the German League to schedule the German Cup semifinal for the club on Saturday, just 48 hours before their first-ever EuroLeague playoffs display.
This will be the first time in German basketball history that a team will compete in the EuroLeague playoffs and Trinchieri didn’t bite his tongue during a recent press conference about this decision.
“I asked the club why. Why play a top-four game 48 hours before the EuroLeague playoff game. This is the only thing I asked. Then I have to manage the thing, I have to deal with the thing and the health of my players will still be a priority because our season is not over this weekend, and this is something I had to take into consideration. I asked my players to go over their mental and physical limits every day and I believe they deserve from my side that I care for them. I have no logical answer [for the decision] but this should not be an excuse to not give the maximum. We will go and try to give our maximum. We will try to find the energy that we don’t have, we will try to prepare, a top-four and EuroLeague playoff [game], but the first game is with Ulm. So all the rest doesn’t exist. It’s like the world ends on Saturday”, Trinchieri stated.
Baiesi noted that the club has reached out to the league in order to find a solution for the schedule, but it has been overlooked by the BBL.
“I think that the decision process itself it’s wrong and I think that the decision itself is disgraceful. Somebody has been preaching to us about fair play recently… As an individual and as an employee of Bayern Munich, I have to say that we are not going to accept any lesson in terms of fair play by anybody that made such stupid decisions because it’s not that the schedule is so packed that there is no alternative. As a club, we had proposed in advance alternative dates, because it’s not like we flip a coin and all of a sudden in one night we qualify for the playoffs, we’ve been in the playoff race for months. For me fair play is a two-way street it’s not a one-way street. It’s the way we behave towards one another and I think that what has happened has nothing to do with fairness and it’s going to hurt the game itself.”
UPDATE: Ultimately the German Cup Top Four was not held on the weekend of the 17th and 18th of April due to a COVID case in the team of BG Gottingen and Bayern got its wish by accident.
Photo: EuroLeague