By Eurohoops Team / info@eurohoops.net
Olimpia Milano coach Ettore Messina will stay at the helm of the team for the 2023-24 season according to the club’s general manager Christos Stavropoulos.
“Messina will stay,” Stavropoulos said while being interviewed on Greek ERT TV. “There’ll be a big domino this year with coaches. Let’s see how the season ends, it’ll be an important piece for our planning.”
Last November and after a 29-point loss at home to Anadolu Efes, Messina, who’s also Milano‘s president of basketball operations, discussed the possibility of resigning from his post as head coach. Amid injury problems, the Italian team was struggling in EuroLeague and, some weeks later, had a 3-10 record.
Messina then mentioned that he “won’t be jumping ship” and that he’s determined to turn around the situation.
Milano rekindled its playoff chances after going on a 7-1 run in the second leg of the regular season but ultimately finished with 15-19 and was eliminated.
“It was a difficult season with a lot of bad luck,” Stavropoulos commented. “We lost important players in the beginning and the problem with injuries is that if you lose important players in the beginning then the team won’t have automatisms and structure. It was a very important part of our failure in EuroLeague. We had our first practice with every player three weeks ago. We made a comeback attempt with some big wins but didn’t catch up.”
Stavropoulos also talked about the expected EuroLeague expansion of 2024-25. “The only certain thing is that there’ll be 18 teams in next season’s EuroLeague but there’s a very big possibility that we’ll have 20 teams in 2024-25.”