The coach of Real Madrid, Pablo Laso, considered, on the eve of his Euroleague semifinal match against Barça, that the current “is not the best moment of the season” for his team, since in his opinion it was until December before the casualties due to COVID-19, although admitted that he sees his team “in a good moment” after winning the playoff 3-0 against Maccabi Tel Aviv.
“No, because our best moment of the season was before COVID until December, the feeling that the team had 3-4 months of solid, continuous play, with everyone contributing, and not Madrid, but all of us, we have had a strange situation that we knew was going to happen, with COVIDand the ins and outs of injuries”, said Laso, at the Stark Arena in Belgrade. “The feeling of greater solidity has been in that part of the season, although I recognize that we have had bad moments and now we are in a good moment “, he added.
The real Madrid returns to Belgrade, where he was last proclaimed champion in 2018, with Laso at the helm, who wouldn’t mind having a ‘déjàvu’ in the Serbian capital. “I would like to, but they are different years, different teams, this is a great basketball city, for me it is always a pleasure to come here. I am very grateful to my team, my club, to everyone. And I believe in déjà vu”, he added This Thursday (21:00 CET/19:00 GMT) will be the seventh Clasico between Real Madrid and Barcelona this season, of which the Barça team has prevailed in the last five: Both in the regular phase of the Euroleague and the Endesa League, as well as in the Copa del Rey final, while the Whites’ last victory was in the Endesa Super Cup at the start of the season.
“It’s a different match, a new match. We are in the same country, we play many times, but each match is different. I think the Clásico is very big in Spain, but it’s bigger in Europe. Great players, (Niko) Mirotic, Edy (Tavares)… everyone can step up in that game. We both have a lot of confidence in our players. I’m not happy that we lost the previous ones, but tomorrow’s is a new one for both of us and we both know it,” argued Laso.
The Victorian coach has played the three Clásicos in a Final Four of the Euroleague, both the 1996 semifinals as a player (Barça won 76-66), and the 2013 and 2014 semifinals as a coach, in which he won both (67-74 and 62-100). “’96 was a difficult year because we had Joe (Arlauckas, former player and presenter of the press conference) on the team, winning with him was difficult,” Laso joked.
“My experience as a player has not been so good, as a coach it has gone better for me, we have won the two games against Barcelona in the Final Four. But that’s it, for me this is history, for good and for bad. They are different matches and for me there is probably more noise outside the match than in the match.“, he commented.
For Laso, it is “a basketball game, obviously you want to win, as if it were against Efes or Olympiakos”. “We want to beat Barcelona, it would be missing more, like them to us. We all understand that the noise is greater in a match like the Clásico“, he concluded.