The head coach of Barcelona, Svetislav Pesic, was furious with the Managing Director of EuroLeague Players Association, Bostjan Nachbar.
Pesic talked about his players’ injuries and heavily criticized Nachbar and ELPA during the press conference after the victory of the Catalans against Crvena Zvezda.
“We miss players but others miss players as well. You know there was the World Cup and that practically all the players that played got injured. I didn’t injure them, they did it themselves [by participating in the World Cup].
They only played at the World Cup and didn’t train. When you don’t train and now that Nachbar [Bostjan] is making new rules that the preparations for next season should start on August 24.
He’s not a normal boy. He doesn’t even know that we are in Europe, we’re not in the NBA. We usually take from the NBA what is not good, we don’t even think about taking what actually is good.
Imagine, he’s [Nachbar] asking in front of the players’ association that the squads start training on August 24 and we have the Supercup on the 21st, or all the teams. The season starts in the last week of September. And he says four weeks of preparations for the whole season that lasts ten months. The man is completely abnormal.
We have that situation and not only us, Fenerbahce, Real Madrid, all the teams that gave most players. It’s usually the European teams that gave the players for the World Cup. Everybody’s injured. I don’t know how those people don’t ask us, who actually know.
Usually, when I don’t know something, I ask. And they don’t ask if there’s a training method. They think it’s only ‘buy the player and win’.
You need to prepare the player, he needs to train. Maybe training shouldn’t exist at all. We know everything without training. That’s the reason there are a lot of injuries and it’s not good overall for European basketball,” Pesic mentioned.
For its part, EuroLeague Basketball has opened disciplinary proceeding against the Serbian coach.
