Like a litmus test VEF Riga the chances of the team’s new model to achieve the set goal and overcome the FIBA Champions League qualifying barrier after a three-season break will be the first game in which Arena Riga last year’s champion of this tournament, Bonnas, will visit Telekom Baskets. The game will start at 19:00 on Tuesday, its live broadcast Go3 Sport Open in the channel.
In the offseason, the Latvian champions experienced one of the biggest changes in recent years. Mārtiņš Gulbis has replaced Jānis Gailīš, who moved to Germany, as the head coach. The season has started with fluctuating success with his new assistants. In the first game of the repeat of the spring final, a painful loss was experienced against Riga Zellii (88:91), but a couple of days later in the duel between the champions of the neighboring countries in Tallinn, the local team was defeated by 84:63 Kalev/Cramo.
“We are aware of the format of the Champions League and the importance of each game, so we are glad that the team was assembled very early this summer and from the first day the training camp was practically full,” prerequisites for hopes for a good performance already at the beginning of the season to the newspaper Day named VEF Riga club president Gatis Jahovičs. It is true that the competition should also be evaluated, because in the preliminaries “Vefians” got into Group E together with two teams that had previously won this tournament – AEK Athens did it in the second season of the tournament in 2018, and Telekom Baskets triumphed in 2023. Ramatganas, the freshman of this tournament, is still in the company Maccabiwhich returned to Israel’s top league last season after a 13-year hiatus with a third-place finish in the main tournament.
Bonn Telekom after an excellent 2023, when they also reached the final of the German Bundesliga, they finished last season on a minor note. For this reason, we had to fight for a place in the main tournament of the Champions League in the qualification (99:91 against Andorra MoraBank78:71 against Sassari Dinamo), but it has made it possible to get a good level of practice in international games already at the beginning of the season.
The winners of the group will enter the second stage of the tournament, while the winners of the second and third places will compete for it in playoffs with Group F (Morning, Falco, Reggiana, Slask) teams.
2024-10-03 05:14:18