Banchi: I’m living an extraordinary moment but I don’t fell like a national hero at all

Luca Banchi, coach of Latvia and best coach of the FIBA Basketball World Cup, spoke about the experience in Asia with the national and the crowd bath on the return to Riga with thousands of people who cheered the team.

The coach’s words to La Nazione.

"Our profession is a profession that makes us accustomed to peak excitement and to as many moments of disappointment, but actually I have lived and am living an extraordinary moment of my career, especially because I feel fulfilled for the task that was entrusted to me, namely to bring back the enthusiasm for basketball in Latvia and especially the National to the standards it deserves. I arrived here two and a half years ago in an environment that was experiencing a strong state of prostration. Since 2017, Latvia has been missing the World Cup, and young talents here, and there are, are leaving very quickly. Basketball, in other words, had lost interest. We started working from the bottom, going to see matches also in the provincial camps and doing camps and clinics with my staff even in the small realities, and finally we succeeded in the goal. But I do not feel like a national hero at all," Banchi said.

"I still have the image of the team, carried on an open bus, hooked between two wings of crowd along the entire route, 10 kilometers, that goes from the airport to the center of Riga. The excitement for the speech I delivered in front of thousands of people in Riga Square, and I am happy that my family was with me on this occasion," added the coach.

"I’ve been doing a gypsy life for 22 years, but I’m not transigent about this. I don’t have a bachelor’s degree to flag, but strong principles that my family has given me. I thank them because, as an African proverb says, they  gave me wings to fly, but also roots to come back."