In his first press conference since finishing fourth at Eurobasket and advancing to the Olympic Qualifying Tournament, Serbia coach Sasha Djordjevic publicly attacked FIBA and the referees during his meet with the media in Belgrade.
“In the first Eurobasket game I intentionally got the technical since I saw what was coming,” Djordevic said. “I did the same in Spain2014. Obviously FIBA’s interest is not for Serbia to fight for medals. What does European basketball have from Serbia in financial way? As federation, our budget is €2 million, so we can’t do much to improve our relationship with FIBA, referees and so on. After the game against Finland, I passed by Goran Radonjić and asked him if they’d like to relegate us from event, so we could not play there. Obviously some things happened and we will react. We will send them a video report.
“Serbia had the same referee in four games. Greek Christodoulou is a great referee, but this is not clear to me. It’s not clear why a Spanish referee officiated us in the semifinal and it’s not clear why they take away from the athletes the right to fight for a medal, but this just make our challenge even greater. Tony Parker said to our captain Milos Teodosic: “You play here every year and in general you get no respect,” he added.
Source: Eurohoops
