By Aris Barkas/ barkas@eurohoops.net
Two days ago, it was decided that due to security reasons, the game between Valencia and Hapoel Tel Aviv would be played behind closed doors.
With Hapoel getting the win, somebody would assume that the decision helped the guests prevail; however, as coach Dimitris Itoudis said, that was not the point.
Hapoel Tel Aviv coach talked in the post-game press conference about the elephant in the room without being asked: “It’s a pity that in such a great arena… and I congratulate Valencia for the construction of this arena, it’s what basketball needs. And what basketball needs is more fans. The fans are great, they push their team, but they also push everybody to play good basketball here. So I hope that the next games will happen with a full arena, and that’s what basketball needs”.
Valencia coach Pedro Martinez was asked if the absence of the fans played a role in this result, and as he said, that was not the case: “I don’t want to use everything that happened before the game as an excuse. We have to adapt to situations and not complain because it’s useless. We would have loved to have fans, but I will not say that we lost because we were missing our fans”.
It remains to be seen if in the next games of Israeli teams in Spain, the same conditions will apply.
Meanwhile, Itoudis also repeated that he would love to see the EuroLeague expand to 30 teams, as he said in his recent interview on the EuroLeague Head Coaches Board website.
The Greek coach, who is also the president of the EHCB, added when asked about the fact that he can’t register all his players in the Israeli league, due to the local rules, that he hopes to have parity in everything between EuroLeague teams in the future and also that local players don’t need protection, and they don’t play just because they got a passport.