Credits: Fiba
At the end of Puerto Rico-Italy, a match dominated by the Azzurri, we interviewed exclusively coach Giuseppe Mangone who was truly enthusiastic about his team’s victory.
Coach, another great match, another great victory for Italy, you are among the top four in the world, what a story!
We are actually really happy, they just told us that it had never happened that an Italian Under-17 team reached the top four at the World Cup, so something new has happened for Italian youth basketball, we are happy to have made history. We have two more games now to play for the chance to return home with a medal and so the motivation will remain high, the joy of playing even more and we are enjoying these last two days.
This was another very tricky game because they are a very physical team, that always goes very hard on the rebound. What was the key to the victory in your opinion?
So, Puerto Rico, as we said in the meeting before the game, we used it as an example because in our opinion it is the team in the World Cup with the most desire to win. The fact that they arrived in the top eight with a team that does not excel in physicality, but they showed really great desire every game, so we set ourselves the goal of trying to equal the same desire that they had to win. In the first half we struggled on the rebounds because they attacked us, they attacked us on the rotations, in the second we were really good at helping each other more on defense, improving communication, being a little more careful on all the rebounds and taking the inertia of the rebounds we were able to take that of the game as well.
Communication is something that has been seen a lot in defense, the guys talk to each other, they look for each other and so it makes you take a step back for a moment to the call-ups. How much was the fact of having two big blocks, the one from Milan and the one from Bassano, sought after or how much instead were these simply the twelve best players you had available?
There is nothing refined in the sense that we try to bring the best group beyond everything, the important thing is not so much the teams they come from but the fact that these guys have known each other for two and a half years and more or less it is the same group, then we have some guys who couldn’t come because they had some physical problem, others who fought for their place until the end, so let’s say that the understanding off the pitch, the communication understanding is something that we carry forward from the fact that we have known each other for a long time. Then from here going two and a half years ago some players when we started were in different teams and so the fact that there are two blocks is more a coincidence than anything else.
2024-07-05 18:54:44
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