Funny atmosphere for the presentation of Luca Banchi. The new coach of Virtus Bologna had little opportunity to express himself alongside the club’s owner, Massimo Zanetti. He rather focused largely on the reasons which led to the dismissal of the previous coach, Sergio Scariolo.
“ I consider Sergio Scariolo a great coach. I even defended him in certain circumstances, when high-ranking people in the club were unhappy. But every relationship ends, something happened ”, begins by situating the “king of coffee” (Segafredo).
The manager criticizes his former coach in particular for his exchanges with the Raptors and Real Madrid, “ while he was still under contract with Virtus “. Contacts confirmed by the coach himself, last June, who had also displayed his “ gratitude to Virtus and Toronto for the understanding and flexibility they have shown regarding common interests “.
This “flexibility” does not really emerge from Massimo Zanetti’s speech today. “ When Scariolo met with the Raptors and Real Madrid, he treated us like a second division team. La Virtus is the team with the largest number of supporters in Italy. I consider my club to be the most important in the country. We can’t treat this club like any other “, fumes the leader.
The management of Milos Teodosic and Marco Bellinelli in question
The latter also criticizes the Spain coach for a certain hypocrisy, particularly in his management of the team’s veterans, Milos Teodosic (36 years old) and Marco Bellinelli (37 years old).
“ In the end, only Teodosic left. I had a very good relationship with him, but we must not forget that in October of last season, Scariolo did not want Teodosic and Belinelli because they were too old for him. He didn’t use them in many matches. »
The owner says he had to “ fight for them. Fortunately, we were able to extend Belinelli’s contract. Teodosic was injured and did not accept our contract extension offer. In the end, I think it was the right decision for him to return to Belgrade. But despite his departure, this team is really strong. (Ife) Lundberg? Scariolo already wanted to make him leave last season, how can he say that it was us who decided to remove him from the squad? »
At the same time and paradoxically, Massimo Zanetti reports having promised, last April, a lot of freedom to the coach for building the team (” I told him he could have built the team the way he wanted. “). But the two parties were obviously starting too far to continue to agree, while Bologna also had to limit its budget to satisfy the “financial fair play” of the Euroleague.
“For six months we have been treated as if we had no money. We have the second largest budget in Italy. The decision regarding this season’s budget was imposed by the Euroleague. It wasn’t our decision. A lot of people tend to forget that we also invest a lot of money in women’s basketball.”concluded Massimo Zanetti, extremely upset.
