Andrea Trinchieri opens third season of The Crossover

The Crossover with Joe Arlauckas returns for its third season with FC Bayern Munich head coach Andrea Trinchieri as the first special guest. This season, fans will also be able to watch the full conversation on Youtube and check, for example, how the decorated tactician discusses the length and breadth of his career, from his days as an assistant at Olimpia Milan, his winning multiple coach-of-the-year trophies, his decisions to take certain jobs and much more. They begin with Trinchieri’s roots and his decision to forgo a Harvard education to become a coach, and later discuss his basketball philosophy, with many colorful stories sprinkled in.

[02:00] “I’m a melting pot… My dad was the son of an Italian diplomat that married a Kentucky woman. He was born in Panama and lived all over the world,” said Trinchieri of his background. “My mom was from Yugoslavia – half from Montenegro and half from Croatia – and she was studying in London. [My parents] met there. I was born and raised in Italy, but had the chance to travel all over the world. Believe me, that’s helped me a lot in my job.”

His family did not look fondly on Trinchieri’s decision to turn his back on Harvard University, where his father had studied, to pursue a career in basketball. After initial success, which saw Trinchieri land a job as an assistant on the Olimpia Milan bench, he was disappointed when passed over for a promotion and left the club in February 2004. His first job as a head coach would come that summer in the third division.

[22:10] “For sure, it’s a downgrade, but it could be even worse. It could be in the fourth division! It could have been nothing. I really took it like the best opportunity of my life,” Trinchieri explained of his start at Cremona, where he still lives in the offseason until today.

[26:30] “Whenever you have a chance to do things, I consider myself blessed. I had the chance to be a head coach, in a good club, with an amazing owner, a lot of fans. Yes, it was not EuroLeague, but believe me, I was coaching there with the dream to coach EuroLeague.”

Over the next several years, Trinchieri made quite a name for himself in European circles. He led Cantu to the EuroLeague Top 16 and then went abroad for the first time with UNICS Kazan, which he guided to a 20-4 record in a brilliant 2013-14 7DAYS EuroCup campaign. He was ultimately named EuroCup Coach of the Year, but the season ended in disappointment when UNICS fell to Valencia Basket in the finals. Then came a move to Germany.

[58:10] "It was an amazing run because we put together many different things. In the sea, big fish eat the small fish. We were not the big fish, but at least we wanted to be a quick fish. So if they want to eat us, they have to work hard,” Trinchieri said, summing up his philosophy at Brose Bamberg. “We wanted to build a system that was, of course, different because we have a different budget. It was not a big city, was not a big name, so we wanted to do all the other little things. Take a player, make him better, and lift the team: Improve the team while you’re improving players.”

Three successive German League titles and narrowly missing the EuroLeague Playoffs in 2016 further cemented Trinchieri’s status as one of the continent’s top coaches. His next move, to sleeping giant Partizan NIS Belgrade in November 2018, surprised many. For Trinchieri, it not only brought him back to his Balkan roots, but also to one of the great basketball capitals.

[1:11:40] “I believe that that geographical area is the crib of basketball in Europe and now it’s spread all over,” he said of the former Yugoslavia. “Being the coach of Partizan, I had the luck to be in a live hall of fame. I had a hall of fame in front of me every day. Players, coaches. I studied, I tried to steal from everybody. From Vujosevic, Zeravica, Nikolic, Obradovic, Ivkovic. It’s a hall of fame! What do you want more? It’s like Springfield. Not Springfield, Massachusetts… Springfield, Belgrade!”

With a one-hour format of exclusive one-on-one interviews, The Crossover with Joe Arlauckas goes well beyond the playing court with each podcast to delve into the life experiences that have made his guests protagonists and legends of the EuroLeague. The Crossover debuted in 2018 and has featured such current stars as Toko Shengelia, Shane Larkin and Kyle Hines, coaching greats such as Ettore Messina, Pablo Laso and Zeljko Obradovic, and legends like Theo Papaloukas, Nikola Vujcic and Mike Batiste, among others. You’ll get to hear from many more of the EuroLeague’s finest in Season 3.

The Crossover with Joe Arlauckas is available on Youtube, iTunes, Audioboom, Spotify, Deezer, RadioPublic, Google Podcasts, TuneIn, Stitcher, CastBox, iVoox and other platforms.