Soon, very soon, the Palau is going to dress up. The season just started, the best suits must be taken down before Real Madrid's European visit this Thursday. Barça opened with a defeat in the Euroleague, against Olympiacos also at home, so the second classic of the season -after the Super Cup- already puts Jasikevicius' team under a lot of pressure.
Between the Super Cup, the League and the Euroleague, Barça has started the season lurching, reaping as many victories (3) as defeats (3). And in full search of regularity, the new Real Madrid of Chus Mateo emerges, with suitcases full of talent, and who, on the contrary, has started the course like a shot (six out of six). “Sensations are more important than results. There will be many emotions and you will have to know how to control them ”, highlighted Jasikevicius in the previous one, aware that the pressure is hanging over his roof.
But there is another factor that must also be taken into account for tonight's duel. The landing of the Lithuanian coach on the Barça bench confirmed what seemed like a new cycle change, suddenly stopping Madrid's superiority in national basketball. In fact, Jasikevicius came out the winner in eleven of his first fourteen classics, highlighting two Cup finals and the two duels in the 2021 League final. The data was as overwhelming as the way in which that streak has suddenly turned around. Since then, Barça have lost five of the last six games against their main rival. The last one, this same season in the Super Cup final.
So there is no doubt that the first European classic of the course is going to test the mental strength of the Barça team, for whom a defeat would not be far from definitive but it would already begin to open the doors to doubts. The coupling of the six signings made this summer requires time but this Barça has everything but time, with the weight of Europe on the neck in each game facing its thirteenth season with nothing to put in the bag.
In another order of things, the Euroleague publicly admitted this Wednesday to have participated together with the 13 shareholder teams of the competition in a meeting in Dubai with the president of the Dubai Basketball Club, institutional representatives of the city and ASM Global "with the aim of identify opportunities for potential collaboration. On the table, a million-dollar offer from Emirates that, among other things, would mean the inclusion of a team from the region in the Euroleague and the holding of the final four in Dubai for several seasons. “It is too early to specify things,” warned Marshall Glickman, the new general director of the Euroleague.
