Massimo Zanghì: “satisfied with the result achieved, a success having brought 200 fans to Palermo”
Like always Massimo Zanghì little likes the limelight. Throughout the championship he remained behind the scenes, but closely followed the fate of his creature, the Basket School Messina, who comes of age this year. The club created by him and Patrizia Samiani in 2004, after the experience of Messina Basketball, celebrates its eighteenth year of activity. It would have been a birthday with all the trimmings, if the schoolchildren had hit the promotion in Serie B. But having arrived there, one step away from the longed-for dream, remains a great satisfaction for the whole environment of the Basketball School. A club that has consolidated over time in the Sicilian basketball scene, and Messina in particular, thanks to the results achieved in recent seasons. With the president Massimo Zanghì we try to make the final balance of a year, always difficult to manage due to the pandemic and the many tasks that had to be faced to complete it. In any case, it was a crescendo of emotions that we try to tell you in the words of the president.
One more season as a protagonist for the Basket School, his team stopped a step away from promotion to B. There is still something to be satisfied …
“I am very satisfied with the result achieved, Pippo Sidoti’s work, as always, is excellent. He is a master and therefore he brought out all that was possible out of this group. Behind the team and Pippo, there are the managers of this group, from Bruno Donia to Clemente Mazzù, Fabio Vita and Michele Gullè who were the architects of this project whose results have been largely positive. I also want to thank those managers who allow the organization of the Basket School to proceed without problems: Gaetano Freni, Ciccio Micari, Salvo Muscolino and Tonino Broccio, the latter with his company has always kept PalaMili in order, making it safe thanks to the many sanitation interventions “.
You have improved the result compared to the previous season, what was missing to achieve the promotion?
“It was the umpteenth season full of satisfactions that led us to play, a final to go directly to Serie B. A historic result for our club which, with access to the final, crowned a significant year. I think nothing is missing, there are simply two teams that meet in a series of three games and one has the advantage of the field. I think we played evenly, if I have to be honest on the three games, Green Palermo probably deserved it because they did something more than us. If we had had the home factor in our favor, I think we would have had a few more chances. In race one, something didn’t convince me one hundred percent. I was puzzled by the factors external to the two teams. These, as always, shouldn’t affect the final result, but certain facts have left me a bit perplexed and with a bad taste in my mouth. But as a sportsman you have to be consistent and in the end accept the verdict of the field. In race three we did not reach the maximum, Busco with a fever of 39, which we fielded at the last minute thanks to our medical staff, someone was injured and did not recover in just three days. In the end, perhaps, Green had a slightly better equipped team and a slightly longer bench than ours “.
PalaMili overcrowded in the playoffs, especially in match 2 of the final, a lot of enthusiasm and then the over 200 fans following the team in Palermo. Was this how you imagined the return of the public to the arena?
“Our arena for most of the championship did not have important numbers as we played with a series of restrictions related to the tail of the pandemic. Let’s say that the total opening took place only from the semifinal against the New Basketball, but for the whole year we went on with lists, limited numbers, green pass checks and other safety problems that unfortunately did not allow people to follow the matches live. Many families of kids in the youth sector who would have liked to attend the competitions, but it was not possible and they were content to follow our direct. Playing games with thirty or forty people and playing them with the stadium full makes a big difference. The opening of the facility to everyone allowed us to host many people and we are sure it would have been the same during the championship. The great success was bringing over 200 people to Palermo, a trip organized in a few hours, but already on Thursday at 1pm we had two full buses and people were left out. If we had more time we could have formed a third coach. It was a success of involvement on the part of the club, of the youth sectors, of the families who came very close and huddled close to the team in the final part of the championship. I hope that next year we can play a normal championship, without restrictions and probably there will be a continuous presence at the matches, also because there is a real desire to attend live sports shows ”.
For some years now, despite Covid, Basket School has confirmed itself as the leading company of city basketball. Even at a youth level you are working hard, especially the minibasket sector is growing visibly, in a city where many realities coexist …
“I don’t think our company is the driving force in Messina. We are one of the companies operating in basketball in a city where there have been four teams to face the C Gold this year. It is sobering that there are four C Gold teams in a city like Messina. This makes us turn up our noses especially outside our sphere, but probably not quite so, it means that there is a lot of movement in the city and in any case even behind the C Gold there are other companies that play in C Silver and in Serie D. This means that the movement in Messina is certainly growing. Perhaps there is no club that plays a top championship which could also be Serie B and could act as leader in the city and establish collaborations with other realities. I have been playing basketball in this city for fifty years, I have listened to never ending talks, but they have not led to anything really important. There was something in the days of Messina Basketball, which at the time was the top club in Serie A. But I believe that the gene of collaboration is not in the city’s DNA. The hope is that something can change. We currently have a collaboration with the PCR Messina, which has been going on for several years, and we try to carry out a project that intends to make children grow and give the opportunity to have different experiences in the field. We have other ideas in the pipeline, we hope to put them into practice for next season. This year I mainly dedicated myself to the youth sector, helping Patrizia who, as always, throws herself headlong into everything she does. I must say that this has brought important results, from a numerical point of view, on the youth sectors. We started from scratch, because the last two years of hiatus have burned everything. We are working with different groups of kids who have a great desire to start running, playing and learning again. We are experiencing good results, we hope next year to be able to do more in all the youth categories, without sending the boys into trouble. Above all, we hope to have the PalaMili available, which will now be subject to maintenance work, which should start shortly. Of course, without the plant available it would be major problems for all the companies that use it “.
Together with the other executives, do you now feel ready to face a championship of a higher level than the C Gold series?
“I believe that making a national Serie B championship does not only require an economic effort or the construction of a level team. It would be too simplistic. I believe that a club that is going to face such an important championship must be structured in all its components and requires the presence of the figures inside that make the organizational machine move. There is a need for a facility that is available to the club, which obviously will also have to play in those youth championships linked to the first team. We cannot take a leap into the void, but we need certainties, not only from an economic point of view, which clearly become very important “.
