MADRID, 15 May. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Real Madrid basketball coach, Chus Mateo, does not give up “dreaming of winning” the Euroleague since they are “only two games away” from doing so this weekend when they compete in the ‘Final Four’ that will host Kaunas and where they will face Barça in the semifinals on Friday.
“The goal has not been met, the goal is to try as hard as possible and try to win the title. Barcelona are playing very well ahead of us, they are a very strong team, but we have our chance and we are going to go for it. Why not dream of winning the Euroleague, we are only two games away from being European champions and we are going to fight for them,” said Chus Mateo in statements to the club’s official media published this Monday.
The Madrid coach highlighted “the way to get” to this ‘F4’ when “everyone” gave them “for dead” after losing the first two games of the ‘Playoff’ at home against Serbian Partizán and they had to try to force the fifth in “a very difficult field, with many injuries, with many casualties”, and praised the work of “the veterans” for the final comeback at the WiZink Center when they were down 18 in the third quarter.
“Among all of us we got it, but there were three leaders who helped us find it,” added the man from Madrid, who did not hide the fact that players like Sergio Rodríguez, Sergio Llull or Rudy Fernández help him “a lot because they have already had these experiences and this way of coming back to matches and to come back from matches”. “They already know how to do it and they guide us all to tell how to do it,” he remarked.
In this sense, Mateo believes that these players “were an example” for those who are “for the first year at Real Madrid.” “All these are master classes that they take to continue transmitting this winning character that Real Madrid has,” he underlined.
The Real Madrid coach also celebrated that when the fifth game went wrong, “the heart of the team made things that seemed impossible only a little more difficult.” For this, he knows that “a lot of head is needed to play well”, but also that “the heart is very important”.
“When there are moments of anxiety and things don’t work out, you have to try to be calm, use your head without despairing, but don’t stop using your heart, honor, courage, because that often makes you return to the games That is the way, a mixture of heart and head”, admitted.
From that fifth game, the coach remembers that they gritted their teeth “more” when everything was against them and that they “always” had the hope of “finding a window” through which to return to the game. “The ‘Chacho’ got in there a bit, Llull a bit, Rudy a bit, Tavares a bit, Musa, and we all managed to get in with the team and we achieved the victory that has been a great joy for the fans because we didn’t stopped cheering at all times,” he said.
And it is that Mateo does not forget the support of the stands. “When things were going badly, we had the fans there cheering, supporting us, the Palace was full and they never stopped cheering us on. The magic they created with their shouts of encouragement when things were not going well was extraordinary and we felt them very, very close and it helped us a lot to get ahead,” he said.
“Let them know that we will always be giving ourselves everything to achieve the maximum possible, that we will always try to fight as far as we can, and sometimes we will win, other times not, but the effort, the commitment, the fight for the maximum will never be lacking for part of all. Hopefully we can give them joy soon, hopefully it will be in the form of the Euroleague. We would be delighted to make them vibrate with us and to reward them with what we know they long for and that they like to see so much”, he sentenced.