Ahead of the BCL Final Eight, SIG Strasbourg’ Sports Director, Nicola Alberani, spoke about the competition and what to expect from the event that starts tomorrow in Nizhny Novgorod.
Strasbourg qualified for the Final Eight after an exciting playoffs rum, with three wins in a row that allowed the French team to eliminate the more established AEK and Turk Telekom. They will now face Lenovo Tenerife in the quarter finals (Thursday 6th h 16:00 CET), and they share the same side of the bracket with Hapoel Holon and Burgos (same day, h 19:00 CET).
This is what Nicola Alberani said before leaving for Russia:
- What kind of club did you find in Strasbourg, and how happy are you with your decision to go there?
I’m super happy to have joined the club, I realized that the French league is a huge opportunity. From an organizational standpoint, I’m impressed about how the league manages to centralize and run the operations. Obviously, like everyone else, I had to cope with the pandemic and its related issues, from not seeing my family a lot and facing challenges within the club. But I have to say that I find myself in a club that is run like a company and is situated in a beautiful city, so I can’t help but say that I’m happy here.
- How satisfied are you to have joined the BCL Final Eight? Especially after the run you had in the playoffs, when many people thought you were out of the picture.
The European competitions here are very important for the club, also because of the influence of a city that is European at heart. Just think that the attendance for European games is more than for league games, which is the opposite of what happens in other countries.
As you said, it was an amazing playoff run for us. We went to Ankara without Wainright and we lost, then Nizhny came to visit and we lost by a lot, and after that we went to Athens without Colson and lost again.
From then, step by step, we gained confidence in ourselves as the games went by. We reached the last game with Turk Telekom believing that we could do it, and we managed to achieve this great goal by eliminating two clubs that have different resources from ours.
It’s a little dream that comes true for us: we go to this Final Eight feeling like a Cinderella, and we are curious to see what we can achieve now.
- You’re now going to face Tenerife in the QF. It is a club which is synonymous of BCL – they won the trophy in the inaugural season, they have the winningest coach in the competition (Vidorreta), they have grown a lot in the past years. What does it mean for you to play them?
They are a club we look up to. They managed to do a very difficult thing in basketball: they reached the top level, and they stabilized their place there. They’ve been there for years now; they are so good at it. They are so well-organized. Their Head Coach needs no introduction, and a solid foundation as a club that can’t go unnoticed.
On the court, the team is extremely good at executing: it strikes you how well they share the ball to create three pointers, which are their most dangerous weapon. And they do have an impactful big in Shermadini. The important thing on our side will be to avoid that their game works as effectively as always, because if it does, we get beat.
- Do you think that the BCL has become an established competition that can represent an opportunity for players and clubs that play there?
For a club like ours, to play a competition like gives an added value in the market: we can attract players with a certain profile both for how we run things, but also because we can play a continental tournament of such standing. If I think about Colson, Wainright, Jefferson, Lansdowne: playing BCL helps a lot in getting this kind of talent.
- From an organizational standpoint, how was it to deal with BCL for you this season? The format of the competition was changed, did it help you?
I’ve worked in Avellino; we were one of the founding clubs in BCL. I’ve been a huge fan of Patrick Comninos from the start. So, for me, it was easy to come here and go back to playing this competition. As a club, you feel great. You truly feel like their client and you feel that you’re always listened to. Patrick is a manager that has a sound practical sense: the consequence is that they decided to adapt the format during a very difficult time for all clubs.
The ability that the Basketball Champions League displayed was to turn a crisis into an advantage: this new format is exciting and is less heavy on the clubs. The consequence is that every game matter, as showed clearly by our playoffs run. They demonstrated to have the capacity to understand the clubs’ needs and provide effective solutions.
- Which team do you think will win it all in Nizhny Novgorod?
I want to mention two clubs – both from Spain – Tenerife and Burgos. When you see that they are right behind the two Spanish powerhouses in ACB…
- To wrap this up: you would be satisfied of this Final Eight if…?
I would love if we can play hand to hand with Tenerife. It’s the first team we face this season with this quality and this kind of precision in executing. Of course, it’s obvious that I would love to win the trophy, but the first goal is to stay in the game with them until the last moments: then we see what happens there.
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