Let's start with Spain: Like France, Spain is the mosts succesful country in the European Basketball as they won quite a deal of medals. First, the bronze medal with the Senior National Team in Riga. Then they won Gold with the U18 National Team at the Eurobasket in Sweden, Gold with U16 National Team in Italy, Silver at the U19 World Championship in Thailand, Silver at the U20 European Championship in Poland. All the teams in all the categories in Women's Basketball won a medal, to say nothing of the Men's Teams! Well, Spain proved once again, they are at the peak of the European Basketball. Will they be able to prove this with the Clubs next season? With three teams involved in the Euroleague (Ros Casares Valencia, Perfumerias Avenida Salamanca and Rivas Ecopolis) and three in the Eurocup (Ibiza, Zaragoza and Gran Canaria) they have a lot of potential and, as a matter fact, a good chance to succeed. In the domestic Championship the rivalry betwen Ros Casares (who strengthened the team with very good and experienced players such as Ljuba Drljaca and Belinda Snell) and Salamanca (who compiled most of the top European talents such as Sasha Gorbunova, Alba Torrens, Olga Podkovalnikova and Sancho Lyttle who was one of the top players of the league last season) should continue to be intense. Rivas should cope and remain stable at the top of the standings but anyway, the issue is still open and the 2009-2010 season promises to be full of surprises.

On Italy's side, the summer wasn't as succesfull as the Spanish one. But it has been quite a while that Italy didn't enjoy having one representative in every category of the European Championship, especially in the senior's one. Coached by Giampiero Ticchi, Italy made a very good return to the international stage considering the fact that they hadn't been qualified for a European Championship since 1999 (we don't take into account the Eurobasket of 2007 because Italy participated there thanks to the fact that they were hosting it). So, this year, after they were defeated by Spain in the Quarter-Finals, they managed to win over the hosts, Latvia, and fell just by 4pts against Greece in the battle for a spot in the World Championship. So, they finished 6th – the worst place on one side, as they won't participate in the World Championship but with quite encouraging prospectives on the other side, as it can be a promising sign for the future. Italy didn't win any medal in the other categories either: the U20 National Team ranked 9th, the U18 ranked 10th and the U16 ranked 6th. And unfortunately, the situation with the Clubs doesn't seem to be more positive as only two Clubs are involved in the Euroleague (Famila Schio and Cras Taranto) and none will participate in the Eurocup. It's a pity regarding the good performances of Venezia in the qualifying round of the Euroleague (they finished first of the group B with only three losses) and Taranto who were the finalist of the Eurocup. We just wish to Schio and Taranto to represent their country as good as possible and we hope that the Italian Championship will remain one of the major competitions in Europe which will keep on being attractive for the top players of the world in Women's Basketball.