Interviews

SPANDAUW Rene

Saarlouis Royals Head Coach

01 Mar 2010

The unexpected team....

What a great performance you've made to reach the semi-finals of the Eurocup whereas so many other teams had the ambition to win it! It is such an achievement!

What was the ambition of the Club at the beginning of the competition?
After winning the German title we felt it was important for our young players to be developed further and the only way to do so was playing in a European Competition. So, the ambition, as always, was to get better and learn.

Of course, you don't have the same budget as some very good teams, such as Mondeville whom you just defeated, or Orenburg, or even Athinaikos. How did you manage to build such a competitive team?
I only want to play with people who want to work hard, are passionate for the game and are ´normal´ people. We rather sign good people than good players. Then, once we have them here, we try to work as hard as possible and get better that way.

German basketball used to be more present at the top European level, I'm thinking about some teams like Wuppertal, but since 1999 we haven't seen any German team reaching the Final Four of a European competition... Does this mean that the German basketball and German teams are back to the top European level?
No. This is a baby step, nothing more. A lot of changes have to be made to have Germany back at the top of Europe. It just happened that we have a great group of people but we might fall victim to our own success because financially we can not keep up with the perennial powers in Europe.

You will meet Orenburg in the semi-finals match-ups, what is your feeling? Do you think you can make another great performance?
We will try to. That is what we always try to do. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. But only if we try hard, we will get better so that to keep the approach.

And lastly, what is the ambition of the Club for the future?
We want to develop our organisation. The infrastructure should be developed to play in Europe every year. We need a more professional structure, in the broadest sense of words. We are working on it bit not quite there yet. Basketball wise we are fine so it is just the other way we need to develop.