Euroleague: The end of Real Madrid – Partizn, the series that woke up European basketball

Lgood things come to an end. Real Madrid and Partizin will fight for the fifth and last time in just a three-week margin. A ticket to the Final Four of the Euroleague in the background, and a present reading. That of the return of the best Euroleague, of the best basketball in Europe and the tension between giants that was believed to be lost with the advance of time.

Real Madrid and Partizin filled a competition that many non-specialists had lost with classic touches. That tension between players, with the unacceptable limit of the fight in the second match, the visit to the hellish atmosphere of Belgrade and a final, all or nothing, with a Palacio de Deportes that will change its habits. It fills up, no one can buy a ticket for the fifth game anymore.

The Euroleague needed two such giants to push themselves to the limit. The competition, with the advance of other sports, the form of consumption…, lost its traditional force. In the form of audiences, in Spain 130,000 and 180,000 people followed the game through DAZN, according to FormulaTV. Other regular season matches do not reach 80,000 users. It’s growing up. The tension helps, but it is also a way to claim your share of the limelight.

In sports, it is also the return of a legendary club. Partizon, with its indefatigable fans, had been in a competitive desert since that Final Four in Paris. Vesely was in charge, now a key player in Bara. They return, with Obradovic as the answer to everything. And his pavilion, full from the moment the first paper goes on sale, is the best image. They push in a competition that may move away from traditionalism and reach new frontiers such as the United Arab Emirates.

For Real Madrid, an awakening of inner strength. From the champion’s DNA after his demand to win two games in Belgrade. “There is no past, there is no future. Precedents are no longer valid,” Chus Mateo continued. “We must be calm, we know what to do”, is what they always repeat from the white entity. It is the fifth game. The last of the series that changed the recent history of continental basketball.