The demanding Champions League match against Pinar was the first of a tiring January in which UCAM can play ten games
“The most important match is without a doubt the one in Tenerife.” Sito Alonso spoke these words after his team’s defeat in the last match of 2022 in the Endesa League for his team, when they lost to Unicaja, and the biggest stake was last Tuesday’s European match against Pinar Karsiyaka. An assessment that is practically identical to the one he made when the university students had a week with two games, one in the European competition and the other in the League.
An established priority is Sito’s, who appears to be on the first page of the Endesa League coaching booklet, but it’s not very clear when to discuss it personally and when he intends to ease the pressure for a major commitment. Because hosting Falco on a group stage matchday is not the same as staging a best-of-three tie against Pinar Karsiyaka to stay alive in Europe.
The reality is that the UCAM left nothing for the Pinar in a palace it thought was one of its grand nights. Sito already warned to go for everything with his discards: Klavzar, the least used player; and Luther, who is unconvincing and has just been injured.
Also with the rotations: Andronikashvili remained without playing and, on the other extreme, Anderson (the second oldest in the squad) was the one who spent the most minutes on the field and Bellas, the team’s ‘grandfather’, was the fourth, when it is the seventh in minutes in the
Endesa League, but his great defense against McCollum, his direction and Trice’s bad night called for more time.
His team was sweating like hell in the longest game of the season (two hours and thirteen minutes on the clock), and that was because it was also the game with the most fouls called (techniques counted down to the benches), with a very high level contact.
And it is that the rotations will be one of the factors in which more lead will have to turn the “staff” of Sito. Tuesday was the first game in January that could have up to ten, in the event that UCAM pass the ‘play-in’ to play all three games, which would mean making it into the ‘top 16’ of the Champions League would come , who scheduled the first two days of it for the end of the month.
Getting into the top 16 teams in the Champions League would place UCAM in Group L, where Spain’s Tenerife and Bilbao await the winner of this tie and the one to face Portugal’s Benfica and Turkey’s Darussafaka. The Canary Islands and the Basques are just the next two rivals for Sito’s team, and they are both this week: Tenerife this Friday and Bilbao Sunday, where a week of three matches is completed.
Appetizer of a month that continues that trend. And it is that of those ten potential matches in 28 days, half are between the 3rd and the 15th, since to these first three we must add the return journey from Izmir and the following Sunday’s game against Barça. From there, the result of the second game of the play-in will indicate how much the workload increases.
Source: La Verdad
I am Shawn Partain, a journalist and content creator working for the Today Times Live. I specialize in sports journalism, writing articles that cover major sporting events and news stories. With a passion for storytelling and an eye for detail, I strive to be accurate and insightful in my work.
