Papapetrou: “We have missed the presence of Giannakopoulos on the field – Let’s go to the end together like last year”

On Friday night (29/11, 21:15), o Panathinaikos AKTOR welcomes her Monaco at OAKA for the 12th matchday of the Euroleague.

Speaking of the game, Ioannis Papapetrou glorified Vassilis Spanoulis, stressing that he is an excellent choice for the Monegasque bench, while he also referred to his return Dimitris Giannakopoulou on the playing fields, after his acquittal.

Ioannis Papapetrou’s statements in detail:



For Monaco: “They are a very talented team, they have a lot of offensive talent and very dangerous guards, that’s where their game starts. Obviously with the change of coach all teams have an extra motivation. I think coach Spanoulis is excellent for this job, because he has shown very good signs, he will definitely have time to put some things in place. He hasn’t been there long enough for him to pass on his philosophy, but they will surely try to play better with the arrival of the new coach. We have to be ready to set our rules because we are playing on our field.”



On what he thinks Spanoulis will be able to put in the team: “It’s a very full roster, I’m not worried about anything. We look all our opponents in the eye, especially when we play at our stadium, we want to beat them all. Obviously I believe that Spanoulis will start their game, give a better defensive direction. We have to focus on our own game and play the basketball we know, in front of our world.”

On whether they have missed the presence of Dimitris Giannakopoulos from the field: “Obviously we missed him. We are all happy that he will be here with us and I hope for all the games, good luck. Let’s go all the way to the end together like we did last year.”

For the fact that in every second period in the last matches they were always behind by double digits: “To tell you the truth, I was not aware of this statistic. We start the game quite slowly and sluggishly. Obviously we don’t have that scope to do that thing with any team in the Euroleague. We must be more focused, we must not relax and be ready from the first second regardless of the opponent. I think we are working well, we are improving day by day and we will show a very good face tomorrow”.