Real Madrid wants to start building its fortress against Olympiacos
MADRID, 18 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
This Wednesday (8:45 p.m.) Real Madrid will have its home debut at the WiZink Center in the 2022-2023 Euroleague Regular Phase with an always demanding duel against another of the competition’s classics and a direct rival such as the Greek Olympiacos.
After starting the tournament with two starts and uneven luck, a hard-fought victory (68-71) in Athens and a close defeat (75-73), the first of the campaign, in Barcelona, ??the Madrid team hopes to place themselves with a positive balance in their first game in front of his fans, in front of which he has historically always been quite solid and in front of which he will also play on Friday against Red Star.
In fact, last season he signed a total of 17 wins at the WiZink Center, Russian teams and ‘playoffs’ included, and only lost to Bayern and Barça, at his most hesitant moment of the game. Now, he will try to resubmit his candidacy to the main positions from this strength at home, which will also help him show an offensive freshness that has not appeared so far away from home.
The ten-time European champions have fallen short of their attacking records in their first two away games and will have a good test against Olympiacos, one of the four teams to have won their first two games and who have the defense and Physical as the main hallmark, although his offensive start has also been very positive.
The team that Georgios Bartzokas continues to train and that last season reached the ‘Final Four’ began with an important away victory at the Palau Blaugrana (70-80) and last weekend defeated Lithuanian Zalgiris Kaunas (90-80 ), where he has already shown that he aspires one more year to be among the best.
The triple European champion is led for yet another year by power forward Sasha Vezenkov, who already had a great season last season and extended it to the Eurobasket. The Bulgarian is the most valued player, the best rebounder and the fourth highest scorer at the moment in this Euroleague and the Madrid defense will have to make an effort to stop him in a nice duel of ‘4’ with the Frenchman Guerschon Yabusele.
In addition, the Piraeus team, which will have Kostas Papanikolau out, has other well-known players such as point guard Kostas Sloukas or pivots Alec Peters, formerly of Baskonia, and Moustapha Fall, who will try to neutralize Walter Tavares in the ‘painting ‘.
“Olympiacos is a team that has had the same player base and the same coach for a while. They have offensive and defensive mechanisms that make them show a solidity that other teams do not show. They are a difficult team to beat, they move the ball very well and he finds good shots. We expect a complicated match”, warned Chus Mateo in statements at a press conference collected by the club’s website.
Real Madrid enters the game after maintaining its unbeaten record in the Endesa League by convincingly beating Joventut 96-79 after a devastating second half (51-29) and will have the well-known casualties of Adam Hanga, Rudy Fernández, Nigel William-Goss and Alberto Alocen. In the history, the visits of Olympiacos are not usually bad, with victory in eleven of the last twelve.
REAL MADRID: Sergio Rodriguez, Causeur, Deck, Yabusele and Tavares — possible starting quintet — Musa, Llull, Abalde, Poirier, Cornelie, Hezonja and Ndiaye.
OLYMPICS: Walkup, Canaan, Vezenkov, Peters and Fall — possible starting quintet — Sloukas, McKissic, Bolomboy, Larentzakis, Popes, Lountzis and Black.
— ARBITRATOR: Vilius, Petek y Balak.
–PAVILLION: WiZink Center.
