The Spanish team will be in Georgia this Thursday to face Bulgaria in the first match of the EuroBasket group stage
Bulgaria was always a rival classic until the sport of the basket went out in the Balkan country in the 90s. Perhaps the irruption of Hristo Stoichkov as a football superstar made habits change in a country that was always competitive in basketball on the Old Continent.
The point is that to get to this EuroBasket they killed Kristaps Porzingis’s Latvia sending a message to the whole world. Bulgaria is back on the map and will meet Spain for the first time since 1991. The global balance of matches is favorable to our interests with six wins in nine games.
The last time Bulgaria He surpassed us in the 1971 EuroBasket by 84-95. Since then, Spain has linked a streak of five consecutive wins in their direct confrontations and they hope that they will be six in this debut in the EuroBasket.
Ours come with a totally new list presenting themselves seven players from the final 12 as debutants in a major tournament. Only Rudy Fernández and the Hernangómez brothers know what it means to win a title with Spain in the team.
Balls to Lorenzo
There is expectation to see how the recently nationalized Lorenzo Brown spends them. The base is called to cover the casualties of Ricky Rubio, Sergio Llull and company due to injury. Scariolo has high hopes for the performance of a player he already knew during his time with the Toronto Raptors.
Spain knows that they cannot afford even the slightest respite in this group A and that they will play almost everything on one card with the other favourite, Turkey, to try to avoid a complicated round of 16 tie in group B. In this conglomerate are France, Lithuania, Slovenia or Germany as fearsome rivals.
The team will have to roll up their sleeves from the first minute with a Bulgaria that has the nationalized American Dee Bost as his main reference along with the former Barça player Alexander Vezenkov. Both players are very contrasted in the Euroleague and could put a team in trouble Spain whose strength will be the defense.
Scariolo’s team still has to define their roles very well and surely this affordable group stage where Montenegro, Georgia, Turkey and Belgium are also present should give us a clue as to where this new Spain should go. The ribbon Almost so long has passed that even Stoichkov was still active in football.