By Lefteris Moutis/ moutis@eurohoops.net
From which country do most European club champions come from? Eurohoops.net counted the countries whose players have celebrated winning the Turkish Airlines Euroleague the most times and listed the top twelve.
From 2000-01 up to last season’s Final Four in Madrid, 15 teams have won the Euroleague and a total of 216 players have played for them, even if it was for one game. The task of tracing the players that have celebrated the Euroleague trophy was easy, but their registration by country was harder.
We chose to rank the players according to their country of origin and not the one they later got a passport from. The criterion then, has to do with the country each player grew up in and not so much the national team they played in.
For example, Aleks Maric grew up in Australia, despite the Serbian origin of his parents, while Dusan Sakota grew up in Greece from the age of 4. Similarly, Gregor Fucka came of age in Slovenia and later acquired Italian citizenship.
In the following pages you can see in detail all the players who appeared on the roster of a team in the year they won the Euroleague (even if they didn’t finish the season there) based on their country of origin.
Presented here are the countries that have at least five European club champions.