VA few years ago Herbert Hainer was sitting in the basketball hall in Bamberg and saw a man from his place in the stands who he liked immediately. He stood right at the bottom, next to the field, on the sidelines, rushing back and forth, hissing and cheering on his players. Back then, Hainer was working for Adidas. He was in Bamberg on business, he doesn’t remember the details exactly, but he does. He never stopped on the sidelines, a bit like a dervish dancing. And he sweated, quite a lot. “There came”, says Hainer, “the passion from every pore.”
On Wednesday, Hainer sits in the basketball hall in Munich and talks about the man who he liked so much in Bamberg back then and who has now taken a seat next to him. They met in the summer, it was about business. Hainer was immediately infected by the passion. He saw a sparkle that he has not seen in many eyes in his life. At that moment, at the latest, he knew what he said at the press conference on Wednesday: “We have found exactly the coach who is the right one for the demands we have.”
“We don’t just want to be a leader in Germany”
A lot has changed since Herbert Hainer and Andrea Trinchieri were in the hall in Bamberg that same evening. The businessman Hainer, 66 years old, no longer works for Adidas, but heads FC Bayern as president. And the Italian coach Trinchieri, 52 years old, no longer works for the basketball department in Bamberg (since 2018), but for those in Munich for a few weeks. One person stood up for the other in order to be able to meet a claim that Hainer put it like this: “We don’t just want to be a leader in basketball in Germany. We want to make Munich and FC Bayern the European basketball destination. “
This Friday (8.30 p.m.), Trinchieri and his team will start the new season of the Euroleague, the best club competition in Europe, with a home game without spectators against Armani Milan. They are allowed to play although Bayern were shown there last season (until they were canceled due to the virus: eight wins, 20 defeats) and although they did not win the German championship.
You benefit from a wildcard that was issued two years ago. The Euroleague needs FC Bayern as a brand – and FC Bayern needs the Euroleague as an attraction. They plan to participate in the play-offs of the top eight in two years at the latest. Then they move into the new hall that is being built in the Olympic Park. It offers space for 12,000 spectators. There is more money to be made there, but also more expectations to be met. A team that wins eight games doesn’t fill the hall.
Your squad may be inferior, but your coach isn’t
At the highest European level, Herbert Hainer then wants to see his basketball team as a favorite, but this season they will often be outsiders. This can be easily explained in comparison with Armani Milan. In the summer of the pandemic, the Milanese, financed by fashion billionaire Giorgio Armani, signed American center Kyle Hines and Italian winger Luigi Datome. Both have already won the Euroleague. Then there is Malcolm Delaney, who used to play in Munich, but who can no longer be afforded there. In Milan he is to design the game together with the Spaniard Sergio Rodriguez, a former Euroleague MVP. In Munich Žan Mark Šiško will do that, a very talented but inexperienced point guard who played in Slovenia a year ago.
In Munich they know that their squad will be defeated in a few duels, but they are betting that their coach will be superior. Trinchieri won titles in Kazan, Bamberg and Belgrade because his game system and passion prevailed. His players put lots of blocks, played lots of passes, threw lots of threes. “He can put any player in the best position,” says Nihad Djedovic, Bayern captain: “You have to believe in him, in his system.” And what does Trinchieri say? “It’s like a new car. We have to run it in a few kilometers before we understand how it steers, how it accelerates, how it brakes. “
Trinchieri likes to make such comparisons – and it seems as if he infected Hainer with them. When the president reported on Wednesday about the setbacks his basketball professionals had on their way to the top of Europe, he said he was driving. “If I drive from Munich to Nuremberg and there is a traffic jam at Ingolstadt,” said Hainer, “then I don’t turn around, but drive off the autobahn, take a couple of side streets and arrive in Nuremberg.” He believes the driver has found his way who can bring his club to the finish.
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