Real Madrid will play everything for everything this Sunday starting at 7:00 p.m. The prize is the most important of all: the Euroleague. For the white team it would be their eleventh win, which would distance them a little more from CSKA (8) in the historical ranking of the competition. Opposite Olympiacos aspires to its fourth title.
If we look at the precedents, and we are not referring to the direct confrontations between the two, things do not side with any of the finalists. On the one hand, the percentage of victories of the teams that in the semifinals faced rivals of the same nationality is very low. The number of victories for the team that wins that semifinal, in this case Madrid, is 22%. Nine times since the Final Four format existed, teams from the same league have met in the semifinals and in seven of them the one that won ended up losing in the title game. Madrid itself knows well what this statistic is about, totally against it, since it stars three of those times when luck was elusive. In 2013, 2014 and 2022, all of them with Pablo Laso as coach. in all three, the white team beat Barcelona in the semifinals and was defeated in all of them later, by Olympiacos, Maccabi and Anadolu Efes, respectively.
The last example happened to the reigning champion, Efes, who in 2019 first beat Fenerbahçe and then lost to CSKA. There have only been two occasions in which the winner of the duel between compatriots ended up lifting the title: Panathinaikos in 2009 and CSKA in 2016.
But history (more recent, yes), does not side with Olympiacos either. Since the format of all against (2016-17) was adopted, none of the teams that finished as the best of the season ended up lifting the title. In 2017, the leader was Real Madrid (lost to Fenerbahçe in the semifinals), in 2018 CSKA (lost to Madrid in the semifinals), in 2019 Fenerbahçe (lost to Efes in the semifinals) and in 2021 and 2022 Barça (defeats in the final against Efes and in the semifinals against Madrid).
