Manolopoulos: “Unity and young children the profit of the days for National”

THE section of Greek basketball but also the emergence of new protagonists like Mouratos and Moraitis were the side gains from the two important victories that the National against Turkey for the 2023 World Cup qualifiers, as stressed by Sotiris Manolopoulos in Libero 107.4.

In detail, the federal technician spoke about:

-the contribution of his collaborators: “I want to warmly thank all those who helped to achieve these results, especially those who do not ‘look’ much in the media. Now I can speak, but with me is a group of people who contribute the most to every test of the National and I am talking about my collaborators, Savvas Kamberidis, Isidoros Koutsos, Costas Papadopoulos, Nikos Papavassiliou, Nikos Zisis that we had a perfect cooperation all this time, the Municipality of Dikoudis, Costas Kotsis, the whole staff of the National Team and of course the players who gave their best in both “windows” culminating in the games with Turkey “.

-the victory over Turkey: “It was definitely a very big victory, which the players deserved. They presented a real team and they deserve congratulations. We wanted to put the team above everything, we worked on that every day, we fought it with my colleagues, to make a team that plays passionately, to support each other. I think we saw this in all the games. They came in and gave it their all. Especially in the last match with Turkey, who really wanted this match, in a difficult atmosphere, but civilized, and the team remained united until the end. “The messages we got from all this were that they had time to see a National team fight together and give it their all.”

-the difficulty of sending: “Competitively I can say that it is the most difficult thing I have done, since we prepared a team with 4 children who came early in the morning and in one and a half training we had to acclimatize them, to talk about the systems, about everything. But we did it and that explains the quality of the players and I do not say it only for the children of PAO and Olympiakos, since last week we started training with many children from many teams and we did high intensity training, bodies were falling and I thank them very much for this, because everyone gave everything. There is quality in them, not only in basketball, but also as a character. We also had misfortunes, we also had a coronation, with Flionis who was left out for that “.

-the joy that people got: “We are very happy that the people appreciated all this effort and supported us and supports the new effort of the National. It was also a huge success of the EEC administration, but both teams, PAO and Olympiakos, showed in practice that the National team is above all. There are two important messages for me: one is that the team is above all and the second is that we showed that there is new blood, some children played and took the opportunity and showed that we have a future for Greek basketball. This team has given great joy to all Greeks and it is logical that people will always want something more, after all, we get joy from something like that. “At this point I want to refer to the events in Ukraine and say that the war there must end, it is very sad what is happening, and war is not the solution.”

-the future of National and Greek basketball: “At the moment, if we say that the best players in Greece will come, it will definitely be a very strong team. Beyond that there are new kids that can offer. For me the issue is the right planning and the good thing is that there are many ideas and there will be proper cooperation of the teams with the Federation to coordinate the work at the youngest ages. The enemy of good is the best and it is very important for these ideas to move forward. Convincing the agents for the immediate pursuit of victory, of the result, is a very big conversation. Everyone wants it, but whoever says he does not play for the result, especially in A1, is not telling the truth. I am also a coach and I have been charged that I did not put new kids for the result. Young children do not “go out” like that. And let’s not make it easy. They should not be given time, they should earn it, and I am adamant about that. You can not put five new children and wait for all five to “come out”. This is not happening. This is done by planning. In words it is easy. There must be a program, which child will be promoted, why we will promote it, with which good players we will support it, and of course this child must be committed to this program and to the way the team wants to help him ” .

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