Real Madrid plays everything for everything this afternoon from 19:00. The prize is the most important of all: the Euroleague. for the white team it would be his eleventh wounded, which would distance them a little more from CSKA (8) in the historical ranking of the competition. Opposite will be the current champion and for many, the favorite in today’s game. Anadolu Efes looking for their second trophy best team in Europe.
But if we look at the precedentsand we are not referring to direct confrontations between the two, the thing is on the side of the Turks. There is a statistic that should not really influence the outcome of the match, but it should raise the eyebrows of the Madrid fans. The percentage of wins of the teams that in the semifinals faced rivals of the same nationality. That is, just what happened on Thursday between Real Madrid and Barcelona.
The number of victories for the team that wins that semifinal, in this case Madrid, is 25%. Eight times since the Final Four format has existed, teams from the same league have faced each other in the semifinals and in six of them the one who won ended up falling in the title match. Madrid itself knows well what this statistic is aboutas he stars in two of those times when luck was elusive. In 2013 and in 2014the first two Final Fours with Pablo Laso as coach. In both they beat Barcelona in the semifinals and in both they were later defeated by Olympiacos and Maccabirespectively.
The last example happened to the other finalist, Efes, who in 2019 first beat Fenerbahçe and then lost to CSKA. there has only been two times in which the winner of the duel between compatriots ended up lifting the title: Panathinaikos in 2009 and CSKA in 2016. In the following Twitter thread created by BasketNews you can review all the times it has happened.
