MADRID, 28 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Casademont Zaragoza player Santi Yusta, who was in the pre-selection of the Spanish team for Eurobasket 2022, confessed that he has “suffered as much as them” during the championship because “in the end it was not easy, but with desire and heart they have achieved it “.
“I know them all, obviously I’m very happy for them, I’ve surely suffered like them, because in the end this Eurobasket wasn’t easy but with desire and heart they’ve achieved it,” the player told Europa Press at the presentation of the new season of the Endesa League.
The player from Madrid acknowledged that he experienced it “with a lot of nerves”. “In the end they are players with whom I have been, although I was less, like 12 or 15 days”, commented the forward, who participated in the pre-selection of Sergio Scariolo.
Santi Yusta was one of the players who participated in the FIBA windows, which were the basis of the team that ended up winning the European Championship in Berlin. “Obviously the merit is theirs because they are the 12 who have been playing since the group stage. I do my bit but the great merit is theirs,” he explained.
Now, he faces a new season at Casademont Zaragoza, which will be his second in a row. However, the gangs have almost completely revamped the roster, so it seems almost like a new signing for him. “We are a very new team with a lot of new faces,” he said.
“Many new faces throughout the league, not just in the team, and obviously they come with the desire to do well, so it’s a plus for the team,” said Yusta, who averaged 8.2 points in 21 games last season.
The forward sees the new squad as “a young team, with a lot of intensity when it comes to playing”. “I think that’s going to come in handy for the games to put intensity, run, counterattacks, defense, then we’ll see what happens in these first games, but the preseason has gone quite well,” he assured.
Among the new signings, all of them come from foreign leagues and will have to debut in ACB. “They have that desire to come to the league again, do it well, with that illusion that the new ones have. The team is young, with a lot of intensity and a lot of effort that they are going to put into it and that mix between that and forming a group is what goes to come in handy,” he said.
The most outstanding of them is the Cuban Howard Sant-Roos, a scorer who arrives from the Greek Panathinaikos and who a priori has to be the benchmark. “We’ll see how the roles go at the beginning of the season, but each one to help as much as possible, this is a group, we are 12 guys and we are all going to the same goal,” he assured.
Who will also debut in the Endesa League will be Martin Schiller, the Austrian coach who arrives from Lithuanian Zalgiris Kaunas. “He comes with a lot of desire to do well, to vindicate himself in the league and obviously he is a great coach, we have already been seeing him in the month and a half that we have been here, with very clear ideas of what we want to do,” he concluded.