By Kostas Giataganas/ info@eurohoops.net
The Greek coach who led CSKA Moscow to the EuroLeague championship of 2016 and his squad are locked and loaded for one more great season. Despite missing Milos Teodosic, the return of Sergio Rodriguez to Europe for the “Army Team” kept the Russian powerhouse among the main favorites to win the title.
And Itoudis, after proving himself two years ago at the highest European level, wants to return to the throne, even if this means once again taking it away from his friend and mentor Zeljko Obradovic.
And while coaches are measured by results, there’s also beauty in the process and that’s what coach Itoudis is analyzing in this first part of the interview.
We’re still in pre-season. How do you deem the team’s progress and its level of readiness?
“Obviously, we can’t say that we are… CSKA yet, because we were missing some players that just joined us. Leo (Westermann) joined us shortly before them, and he had a minor injury against Panathinaikos.
Without Nando (De Colo), Sergio (Rogriguez), and Leo for the greatest part of the preparation period, and without the Russian players, which means Vorontsevich, Antonov, Fridzon, Kurbanov and Kulagin, more than half the team was missing. So, the contribution and the effort on the part of the teenagers of the B team is very special. Like Katsivelis, whom we signed for a month so that he can help us prepare – he’s doing very well and we’d like to thank him publicly – but at this point, we can’t say we are the team we have to be.
Let’s look at the team in its entirety after the tournament in Zadar. So, in the Gomelsky Cup, after only one training session, we will play as CSKA with a full roster. Of course, we won’t have the full team then either because we will be missing cohesiveness and chemistry. Perhaps Sergio will not know exactly what and who is on the team. So, then, the extent to which I’m satisfied with all this in mind and with half of the team missing, I’m rather satisfied with the running that we’re doing and our fitness and the way we are evolving as a team both in defense and in the offense.
Every day for us is a plus and for the young athletes we have on board as well, teenagers who will make up CSKA’s Β team that will start to play in the men’s league this season, and I’m rather satisfied.”
Westermann, though, despite being new to the team – he actually joined very recently – didn’t seem to have any problems adjusting…
“Yes, the truth is that I’ve told him this. Because we always keep in touch with the international players and Andreas (Pistiolis) sent them a video of the plays, in pdf but also in a recorded version, as soon as he came Leo had two training sessions and knew the systems, which means that he had done his homework. This is why he seemed to be more familiar with the team from the beginning (in the friendly game against Panathinaikos). On the other hand, this was his first game, and we coaches say that the player is fresher and gives 100%. We want to look at duration because the EuroBasket is still very fresh in everyone’s memory, but that is a short tournament. When we are talking about the EuroLeague or a team that we have for ten months, ten months and 50 days are very different. So, the situation is different.”