By Antonis Stroggylakis/ info@eurohoops.net
ANTWERP – Sasa Djordjevic has won a lot as a player and he also has won as the coach of the Serbian national team. So, it was time to win also a European title on the club level and as he said, Virtus Bologna should be proud, because they won the Basketball Champions League by playing the right way.
“I don’t know if you can choose the perfect game, but you can choose the perfect way to play those two most important games”, said Djordevic. “We show the way to play in order to win the trophy. We had a lot of ups and down, I came a little bit late and a tried to put a little piece of myself in this team. We created this unity which was needed in order to be successful. We were completely ready for the final. The team responded in a great way. We played in the right way. And that puts an exclamation mark”.
Speaking about Virtus Bologna and the future of the club. “Virtus has a great history and can have a bright future. The big challenge for me was the history of the club. It had coaches like Aca Nikolic, Dan Peterson, Ettore Messina, Piero Bucchi. I want to keep challenging this history while respecting the past. Once, the former president of Barcelona, Salvador Alemany, once told us when we were playing in the Korac Cup: “For Barcelona, Korac Cup is not a prestigious cup to play. But it will be very prestigious if you win it”. Once you are in a competition, you play to win. So, this is special. It’s an international trophy. And the next game is the most important one and the next trophy is the most important. For now, this is it. And it’s a great obligation to continue playing for titles”.
And Djordjevic believes that the BCL also has a bright future: “Last year’s winner was AEK which has more or less the same history with Virtus. All those teams deserve the chance to grow. And there should be also a vision, a policy. Where do they want to be in a few years? This is something we have to deal with in our club. Where do we want to be? All those clubs deserve to have a great competition, for all those teams which for one reason or another can’t be in the EuroLeague. Those clubs, like AEK and Virtus have the obligation to create a big competition. We must aim not for the 10, but for 12. This should be an aspiration for every club”.
From his side, Tenerife’s coach Txus Vidorreta talked about the fact that his team missed a lot of open threes – and made just five out of 37 – but also implied that the refereeing criteria were not the same on the two sides of the court: “Virtus used a lot their hands. They could do it in the first quarter, we couldn’t do it in the other three but of course, they also made a very good job. At least 50% of the shots we lost, were open. If we had our usual efficiency, we would win the game”.