Βy Giannis Askounis/ info@eurohoops.net
This season’s EuroLeague Final Four will be held in Belgrade from the 18th to the 20th of May. It’s difficult to make predictions regarding the final ranking of the four teams. What is certain is that, in the semifinal phase, Dimitrios Itoudis’s will face the Madrilenos and that Zeljko Obradovic‘s Fenerbahce will battle it out with Sarunas Jasikevicius’s Zalgiris.
Eurohoops searched and found all the other Final Four appearances of this season’s finalists, from CSKA and Real’s presence in FIBA’s first Final Fours to Zalgiris‘s triumph in 1999, as well as the Final Fours in the EuroLeague’s modern era. A common characteristic of all four teams is that they’ve all won at least one Final Four.
1st: 2006, 2008, 2016
2nd: 2007, 2009, 2012
3rd: 1966, 1996, 2004, 2010, 2013, 2015, 2017
4th: 2001, 2003, 2005, 2004
CSKA is the team with the most appearances in the Final Four, not only among this season’s Final Four teams, but also overall in the history of Europe’s top club competition. They won first place for the first time in 2006, though. They won another two times in 2008 and 2016, but their “favorite” place seems to be third since they’ve finished there seven times.