He would have liked to enjoy a beer with his technical team and his family to celebrate a Euroleague title, the second in a row. The defeat against Panathinaikos changed that joy for disappointment, but not the plans and the balance of the path of the Madrid coach, Chus Mateo, who assured that he planned to toast his team as well. “At the end of the day, in life, when I win and when I lose, they are by my side,” he said. And he gave courage to a very tough trajectory during the season to reach the last step of the Final Four, even though it was the Greek team who reached the sky. “Yes, this path has been worth it, I am not going to think that it is not. Now we will cry tonight and we will rise, we will stand. I’d rather have fought until the end. It’s the spirit I want for my team. We will show that Madrid’s character is to congratulate opponents and continue moving forward,” commented the white coach.
Regarding the keys to the defeat after a second half of the final very different from the first, Mateo pointed more to the scoreboard than to the character of his players. “In the first half we understood what we had to do against their defense, but in the second they improved at the back, they played with more physical strength and we lost our energy. And then we shot too many three-pointers, we left them in control because we didn’t play with the same discipline. We should have looked deeper. We lost aggressiveness,” commented the Madrid coach, also “confused” by the refereeing and the fouls his inside men were charged with.
Added to this confusion in Madrid’s ideas and the drop in voltage was the rise of Sloukas, who has already added four Euroleague titles with three different teams: Olympiacos in 2012 and 2013, Fenerbahçe in 2017 and Panathinaikos now.
Sloukas monopolized the limelight that Llull earned last year. “We had the game to break it and we didn’t do it,” lamented the Balearic guard. “They had a higher degree of energy, they were aggressive, intense, effective in attack. They had the patience to find the best positioned man for the shot. We didn’t have that patience in attack, we were very predictable and not very fluid, and they took advantage of it. We knew that the game was going to be long, a marathon. We played a good first quarter, but in the second half it cost us a lot,” added Campazzo.
And from the Euroleague to the classic. On Wednesday (8:30 p.m., Movistar), Madrid hosts Barcelona in the first match of the ACB semifinals, in the best of five matches (Friday also at the WiZink and Sunday at the Palau are next) with home advantage for the whites . Madrid will arrive hurt after the European defeat. “This has to give us fuel,” Campazzo asked; “We have another title ahead of us and we have to get up.”
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