Home FIBA EuroBasket 2013 Turkey not impressed with Italian hospitality

Turkey not impressed with Italian hospitality

Turkey lost their away game against Italy on Tuesday night, for the Eurobasket 2013 qualifying phase, but they have a lot of complaints due to the poor conditions they had to face before and during the game.

The Turkish delegations has many complaints, many of which can be summarised in the following points, according to the Turkish media:

– The home team changed the game venue to the small town of Sassari at Sardinia Island where due to the non-existence of a decent hotel in the town, the Turkish NT had to stay approximately one hour away from the town. Due to the distance, the Turkish team did not have enough time for a shooting practice on match-day.

– Turkish players claim that the balls used during the practices and the game were a new type of Molten ball, which although exists in FIBA lists, it’s almost never used, so they had hard time adjusting to them.

– Il Palaserradimigni is a quite old, 4500 capacity arena, with an insufficient ventilation system while the windows in the Turkish locker rooms were nailed shut and on top of that only hot water ran from the tap, so Turkish players couldn’t refresh themselves. Upon a check after the game, the Italian locker rooms had wide open windows and cool water available from their taps.

Ender Arslan stated after the game: “I’m not saying this as an excuse but as soon as the game ended I had to run outside the arena to get some air. I’ve never seen such a hot and airless gym. I really struggled during the last 2-3 minutes.” while his teammate Semih Erden added: “These little things add up and affect your game. They hosted us very poorly, we should treat them in the same way in the next round.”

All in all, the fact remains the same: Turkey hasn’t beat Italy in an official game for over 55 years.

Source: Fanatik

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