Manolopoulos: “We wanted to bang our heads against the wall – The World Cup is not over yet”

The exclusion of Greece from the continuation of the World Cup in the midst of the “heavy” defeat by Lithuania, yesterday with 92-67, but also the many problems that our national team had to face before brought great sadness to everyone, as pointed out by statements by Sotiris Manolopoulos.

With his assistant coach Dimitris Itoudis stressing that everyone they gave their best but also that everyone in the National team thought that the “official favorite” could do better in Manila!

“There was a lot of frustration yesterday that we have to deal with. There is one more match, the World Cup is not over for us yet. We try to work on it, as a team and individually, to look ready, be competitive and try to win. It was a difficult tournament for us, I think everyone gave their best, they tried for 40 minutes in every match, phase by phase and I think the world saw that. Both those who saw it on TV and those who were on the field and we thank them, because their help is invaluable“, coach Manolopoulos initially said.

And he added meaningfully: “Xwe all overslept in the morning and wanted to bang our heads against the wall. But not because we didn’t try, nor did we look for excuses. We can say many things, but you always think you could have done something better. It was not easy, but this bitterness remains that the way we played in the first half, the image of the second half does us no justice. We, the coaches and the kids, trained every day to win the next game. That’s how we thought, we didn’t think about whether this team is for more or not.”