By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
The defending EuroLeague and Liga Endesa champions, Real Madrid, started their pre-season and coach Pablo Laso expects big things from his players.
As he said: “This will be an exciting season like they all are, and we hope to continue doing things as well as we can and make the fans happy. This is my eighth year here and I am ecstatic to stay on at a great club and have such a great team”.
Laso also explained the pre-season schedule, which will get into full throttle after the 27th of August: “These first two weeks are for the players here in Madrid and who are already training and the injury-hit players will be incorporated little by little. The preseason serves to get the team to that ideal physical state. We are a team who last season had to battle through more than 80 games and along with Baskonia we finished later than anyone else. The break helps us to disconnect, but most have had their individual training to do and that is why they will be incorporated slowly so that on the 27th we can start to lay the foundations for what I expect to be an enthralling season.”
The first big test of Real Madrid will be the “Costa del Sol” tournament. “The Costa del Sol Tournament is a classic for us”, said Laso. “It is tough and we’ll be up against two of the best teams in Europe in Olympiacos and Unicaja. We hope to go into it as best we can, knowing that the important thing in the pre-season is simply to grow and get stronger with each passing day in order to reach the Super Cup in the best condition, with no injuries, have the team prepared physically and technically ahead a season that will be gruelling, to say the least”.
The question is if there’s young talent in Real Madrid that can continue the tradition which was created by Luka Doncic. “We had players in the Euro Under-18s and now in the under-16s”, said Laso. “We have some real talent in the youth teams, they are in tournaments and we monitor all of them. In the most recent, Tisma was great for Croatia, and Garuba also stood out. In general, they are doing stellar work for their countries and that speaks volumes of the work they do at Real Madrid”.