By Cesare Milanti / info@eurohoops.net
MANILA, Philippines – For the first time in the country’s history, Germany has reached the top of the world, beating Serbia in the 2023 FIBA World Cup Final to get a golden medal around their neck.
One of the protagonists of the most anticipated clash of the year was Johannes Voigtmann, who ended the game with 12 points and 8 rebounds while shooting 4/5 from the field. Stopping by in the mixed zone afterward, he took out all of his emotions.
“Unbelievable, it’s unbelievable. I’ve been talking about it now, but I still don’t understand what happened. I’m so happy for all the guys who are with us: the team, coaches, the staff. We’ve been suffering a lot in the past years, and we were able to move it around”, he first said.
While being an X-Factor on offense, the current Olimpia Milano‘s forward had a big impact on the defensive end as well, containing his former teammate Nikola Milutinov, who ended the tournament with only 2 points and 4 rebounds. “We knew in the beginning that Niko is an unbelievable player, he played a great tournament. We were worried because we only had four bigs to put him in trouble and try to contain him and put him in trouble. It worked up pretty well”, he commented.
Spending years with him in CSKA Moscow, the 30-year-old praised the Serbian center. “I played with this guy for a long time, I’ve played against him in practice for a long time. I know what he doesn’t like. He played a great tournament and I think in the next couple of days he will realize what they’ve done because they’ve been playing a great tournament as a team, overcoming what happened to them and to Simanic… you have to give them credit”, Voigtmann added about the whole Serbian team.
On what this victory means for German basketball, the power forward said he still feels surreal. “I just saw the trophy and it’s gonna say Germany for eternity. It’s gonna be Germany on that thing. We’re gonna realize in the next couple of days, maybe weeks or months what we’ve done here. For us, we’re gonna just enjoy it. We had some bad times, we almost didn’t qualify for EuroBasket 2016. We fought back”, the 30-year-old commented.
Finally, Johannes Voigtmann shared emotional words on Germany’s head coach Gordie Herbert, who led this team to an unbeaten run in the 2023 FIBA World Cup. “He’s a very rational person, he tries to take all the emotions out before the game. You don’t wanna be too emotional before a game like this. He did a great job throughout the whole tournament in preparing us, giving us confidence, and putting us together as a team. You can’t say enough good words about him because he’s an excellent coach. A great person, a fair guy, and he’s straight up with everybody. He’s not gonna please everybody on the team, but he’s damn close. His impact is huge. I can’t emphasize it enough”, he concluded.
PHOTO CREDIT: 2023 FIBA World Cup
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