Coach Eremin explained how Spain won the European Basketball Championship

Honored coach of Russia Stanislav Eremin explained how Spain achieved success at the European Championship and why teams with superstars failed in the tournament.

Basketball players of the Spanish national team on Sunday in Berlin beat the French team in the final of the European Championship, which was held in Germany, the Czech Republic, Italy and Georgia. The Spanish national team won the EuroBasket for the fourth time in history, having previously won in 2009, 2011 and 2015.

– Spain has a very good base to win. See how they perform teams of all ages. Strongest everywhere. What is their championship? How many players do they have in the National Basketball Association. Yes, they are changing generations, but EuroBasket showed that those who came are worthy guys. You can accidentally lose, but you can’t win by chance, ”RG” quotes Eremin.

– Teams with superstars failed: Slovenia with Luka Doncic, Greece with Giannis Antetokounmpo, Serbia with Nikola Jokic. Do these failures have anything in common?

– Each of these teams had their own reasons for the unsuccessful performance. Suppose the Serbian national team. It was a surprise for me that it was headed by 73-year-old Svetislav Pesic. This is a very well-deserved coach who achieved results both with clubs and with the national team. But age still takes its toll. A new generation is coming, and it’s not that you understand basketball and know how to build a training process. These guys are good for your grandchildren, they have a different mentality that requires a different energy. And Pesic is an authoritarian coach. Perhaps the current Serbian national team requires a different approach. Despite the fact that the composition of the Serbs is very strong in terms of names, they lacked internal chemistry.

As for Greece. Her head coach Dimitris Itoudis has so many awards, so many victories, he also knows how to organize the training process, but it’s not a secret for everyone that playing the game is not Itoudis’s strongest point. It probably had an effect too. It was in this championship that the winning teams found options for strengthening during the game. And Itoudis, it seems to me, did not find such moments. Well, Slovenia… This is a team that depends heavily on the performance of Doncic and Dragic. But maybe such a team does not need a coach. More precisely, we need a coach who would not interfere with these basketball players to play. Well, the burden of responsibility also affected: at the most important moment, the realization that “we are stronger, we must win” crushed them.

– Hypothetically, what could our team count on at EuroBasket, which qualified for the tournament, but was removed from it for political reasons?

— Our team could count on reaching the playoffs. The fact that the Russian team did not participate in such a big forum is a tragedy for our basketball and a loss for the European one. Our teams were always respected, they were considered. We know how to surprise. Another point: European basketball has taken a big step forward. Look, even such teams as Estonia, Finland, Poland have risen. And we, unfortunately, are cut off from big basketball, – Eremin added.