The virus and health and mobility restrictions will not leave the Uni fan without seeing European matches. Or at least that’s what the people at Spar Girona are trying to do, who, having managed to get around a thousand subscribers to see the team in the league against both Estudiantes and Gernika, they are now very close to the confirmation that, at least, the preliminary phase against the Romanian Sepsis will be played in Girona. And that, if they overcome it, FIBA already knows that they will have the Girona candidacy on the table to host one of the bubbles with Ekaterinburg, Schio and Riga. In principle, both the previous ones and the bubbles would be with the public because FIBA leaves it in the hands of the local authorities and Uni already has the permission to put spectators in Fontajau in league.
Once the possibility of the Euroleague being played in the normal format of groups of eight teams with a double-round tie was ruled out due to the mobility restrictions between countries caused by the pandemic, FIBA established that four groups of four teams that would play two three-game bubbles in five days on the same stage. The first series will be from November 29 to December 5, and the second, from January 17 to 23. Before reaching the bubbles, however, Spar Girona and three other teams (the Romanian Sepsi, the Hungarian Miskolc and the Turkish Izmit) must play the preliminary qualifiers which, instead of being a round trip last week of September, FIBA moved to single match on Wednesday 28 October. And this is where Fontajau comes into play.
Last week, FIBA asked Spar Girona if it wanted to organize the preliminary qualifiers, both against the Romanian Sepsi and between the Hungarian Miskolc and the Turkish Izmit, in a proposal that appealed to the people of the Uni that, no matter how little both the Procicat and the City Council see it well (that they see it, at least the Girona City Council), will respond to the European federation that goes ahead. For now, the Hungarian Miskolc and the Turkish Izmit have already made it clear that they do not want to host these previews and, once Spar Girona has said yes to FIBA, only the Romanian Sepsi, which so far has not manifested , could raise his voice.
The idea of FIBA would be to turn Fontajau into a kind of three-day bubble, from Monday 26 to Wednesday 28, when, in the absence of specific schedules, Miskolc-Izmit and Spar Girona-Sepsi would be played in the same afternoon. The arrival of three teams from outside – Ukrainian, Romanian and Turkish – that would be from Monday, or Sunday night, to Thursday in the city is also well seen in Girona to benefit the hotel sector, one of the most punished by the pandemic . And, even more, if there were the double circumstance that the Spar Girona overcame this previous one and managed to organize one of the two subsequent bubbles, which are more days (and, therefore, more hotel rooms). A victory for Spar Girona against the Romanian Sepsis, a good team with players like the American pivot Rebecca Tobin, her compatriot Gardner or the Montenegrin Jovana Pasic, would put the set of Eric Suris in one of the nine subgroups of the ‘Euroleague with the powerful Ekaterinburg, eternal candidate for the title, the Latvian Riga and the Schia. Arriving here, Italians and Girona will be the two teams with more numbers to host the bubbles due to the mobility restrictions that exist to travel to Russia and Latvia.
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