By Johnny Askounis/ info@eurohoops.net
Josep Maria Berrocal was named the assistant coach at Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv, the team announced Thursday.
Berrocal, 52, will join forces with head coach Oded Kattash. Previous coaching experience includes FC Barcelona and Panathinaikos.
Per the press release: “Josep Maria Berrocal will serve as the primary assistant coach for Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv under Head Coach Oded Kattash. The experienced 52-years-old coach, who was signed for one season, has previously worked alongside great European coaches such as Svetislav Pesic, Dusko Ivanovic, Xavi Pascual and Georgios Bartzokas. Berrocal was also the head coach of teams such as Menorca Basquet, BC Donetsk, Eskisehir, and Estudiantes.
“We are happy to add a very experienced assistant coach, who knows European basketball very well”, head coach Oded Kattash told maccabi.co.il. “He is a coach under whom leading players trained and was a significant part of winning teams. He is an impressive man who believes in teamwork and I have no doubt that he will contribute a lot”.
Josep Maria Berrocal was born in Barcelona on May 30th, 1970 and began coaching at a young age in Joventut Badalona’s youth academy and in other local teams. In 1997 he joined Barca and worked his way up until becoming the primary assistant coach in the senior team in 2002. He stayed there until 2010 when he made the jump to his first head coaching role with Budivelnyk Kiev.
Later on, Berrocal returns to Spain to lead Menorca and Alicante, before heading back to Ukraine to coach Donetsk. He moved on to Belfast for a year, before to an assistant coach role in Panathinaikos. In 2016 he returned home to Barcelona to work under Georgios Bartzokas and continued to Eskisehir in Turkey and Estudiantes in Spain.
In 2019, the Catalan became the assistant of Dusko Ivanovic in Baskonia, helping the team to win the Spanish league. After that, he traveled to Bahrain to be the head coach of Al Muharraq and last year managed CB Prat, a second division club from a suburb of Barcelona.
In Berrocal’s resume? you can find two EuroLeague titles, four Spanish league titles, three Spanish cups, a Ukrainian championship and a league ascension with Menorca.”