By Vagelis Papadimitriou/ info@eurohoops.net
Fans constantly chant about Massimo Cancellieri being crazy. The 53-year-old Italian tactician embraces the notion and wants to keep being himself as the head coach of PAOK mateco.
Cancellieri, sitting down with Eurohoops, naturally went into guiding the team based in Thessaloniki to a championship home-and-away series against Surne Bilbao in the FIBA Europe Cup.
“This team proved to be able to do unbelievable things,” he talked about a back-and-forth game in France to decide the Semifinals series versus Cholet, “You’re down by two at one point. Something at the end, and you go overtime. You want to call it luck. You want to call it being able to score. You want to call confidence. Whatever. Call it what you want. It just happened.”
“We’ve been the underdog every game. So, one more time,” Cancellieri also previewed the next series, “I believe in this Final, Bilbao, as every Spanish team, is very well made and coached. And many players are in their country’s national team. So, they have experience. They have size. They have almost everything. They are complete, OK. We are going to have two more games with the same approach. Going there and showing our willingness, at least, to be happy to stay together.”
“Einai trelos”
With his coaching career expanding beyond Italy to France over the last three years, Cancellieri made his way to Greece and PAOK for the 2024-25 season and quickly acknowledged the particular surroundings.
“I understood it was religion when everybody seeing this team was respecting. Their culture, their love, their history, and the club itself,” he described his relationship with the team and the fans, “I started to discover, as I said in another interview as well, when they started saying, ‘Thank you for what you’re doing’. It means they appreciate, they understand that you do it also for them.”
“Whenever they say, ‘einai trelos (he’s crazy)’, is the only complete sentence I can understand,” he shared with Eurohoops, “I have been through situations in which the same way of being has been considered negative. In this place, it is positive. So, if people define you for who you are, this is better. I don’t like to be somebody that is not himself, to be fake, to be somebody else. I’m not able. I don’t even know how to do it.”
“This is the only real cool thing about this year,” the Italian boss added on being labeled as crazy.
“The team defines the style”
Cancellieri admitted to adjusting initial plans for the style of play after moving from theory to practice.
“It’s the team that defines the style, not the coach,” he stressed, “Because of my path, it’s difficult sometimes for me to say, ‘OK, I want to play like this’. I can tell you in the summer, studying the players or after signing the players, you believe you can have an idea. Then, you start coaching the team, and I change almost every time. I start with an idea, and I develop another one.”
The interview spilled into becoming more connected with the players and a special bond with his current squad, preferring the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague over the NBA, his future with PAOK, and being considered a good or bad coach.
Massimo Cancellieri on Eurohoops TV
Video and edit: Kostis Terzis