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.
1st: 1967, 1995, 2015
2nd: 2013, 2014
3rd: –
4th: 1993, 1996, 2011, 2017
The Whites have three wins in the Final Four: in the distant 1967, in 1995 and in 2015. In contrast to the Muscovites, who have a tendency to end up in the third place, the Madrilenos have never won a third-place game, even though they’ve played four of them.
Fenerbahce Dogus
1st: 2017
2nd: 2016
3rd: –
4th: 2015
This season, Fenerbahce will play in the EuroLeague Final Four for the fourth time in a row. The first time they finished fourth, the second time they reached the final and the third they won the title. It remains to be seen whether they will be able to repeat last season’s feat by triumphing in Serbia.
Zalgiris Kaunas
1st: 1999
2nd: –
3rd: –
4th: –
As for Zalgiris, the data is simple. They’ve played in the Final Four one time, in 1999, when the EuroLeague was still under the umbrella of FIBA. The one and only time they appeared in the Final Four, they made sure to win the title. They weren’t the favorites back then and they aren’t the favorites this season either…
* In 1966 and 1967 FIBA held the two first-ever Final Fours in order to decide who is the European champ. The format was short-lived but made a return in 1988 and since then it remains unchanged.