By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Olympiacos head coach Giannis Sfairopoulos was, naturally, far from satisfied from what he saw from his players in the game against Panathinaikos.
The Reds suffered their second Euroleague defeat in a row after a poor offensive display vs their arch-rival at home. While players like Janis Strelnieks shined, others didn’t manage to perform as expected, as Sfairopoulos admitted, without mentioning any names.
“Spanoulis is our leader and it’s a loss when your leader isn’t playing. Nevertheless, we have shown we can perform well without him. Of course, when he’ll be back the team will be better. On the other hand, some players must step up. Janis Strelnieks is someone who came to also have a leadership role and shows it. But we also signed some players to take a protagonist role but haven’t shown it thus far. They must step up and play better,” said Sfairopoulos.
Regarding the game in general, the coach of Olympiacos mentioned the following: “I think that we didn’t have a good game today. We didn’t fight as we wanted, as we planned before the game. We missed a lot of loose balls defensively, which went to their hands. On the other side, our biggest problem was our offense. We were not the threat that what wanted to be and did not play the game the way we wanted. We had some open shots and some layups that we missed and I think this hurt also our confidence as the game was going on. We have some problems to finish some easy plays – easy baskets, layups and open three-point shots that could change the momentum of the game. We lost a home game – it is a tough situation because that is a game we wanted to win. We need to work hard and improve our game, to play much better from now on. The EuroLeague season has just started. It is a bad result but has to recover from it very soon.”