At the end of a 7DAYS EuroCup Regular Season like no other, Rade Zagorac of Partizan NIS Belgrade remembers the missing fans who so inspire his and other teams and hopes to see them back in the stands as soon as possible.
Rade Zagorac: 'Partizan fans are extremely basketball literate'
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Hello again, everyone! I am glad to have the opportunity to interact with 7DAYS EuroCup and Partizan fans again.
In this blog, I would like to write about the difference in playing EuroCup matches this season compared to the previous two seasons.
Certainly, the first thing that comes to my mind is the most obvious change, and that is the absence of fans. In addition to all the obvious reasons why it is no longer the same to play games as before, I must say that Partizan is a team that belongs among several that suffer the most damage in the current circumstances. The main reason for this is the average attendance at our matches last year was more than 10,000 fans in every game that we played at home. And we should not neglect the fact that we had huge support from our fans across Europe at away games such as ASVEL, Trento, Limoges, Virtus Bologna, Venice and many others.
What is very important to mention is that the audience at Partizan games is extremely basketball literate because they have witnessed many great results that our club has had throughout its history.
That being said, it often happens that in moments when our team is not doing well, when the opposing team makes a big run, our fans would always recognize the importance of their support in those moments and put incredible pressure on opposing players. Most of the time, they would be the main reason for Partizan managing to catch the opposing team's lead.
The atmosphere in Bologna last season will be remembered most. It was the most important match in the Top 16 phase, and the victory would secure first place for us before the playoffs phase, which unfortunately was never played, for reasons known to everyone.
The arena was sold out in advance, the coach of Virtus was a former player and legend of our club, Sasha Djordjevic, and their team featured Serbian players Stefan Markovic and Milos Teodosic, as it does today. As expected, Virtus had 80% of the fans on its side that night, creating a fiery atmosphere and great passion in the stands. We had about 500 of our fans who, like the Spartans, opposed a much larger number of opposing fans. The match was very tight and physical from the very beginning to the end, and we managed to steal the win late in the game.
I still have the hope that things will get better soon and that we will have such atmospheres all over Europe again.
I wish everyone good health and happiness before the New Year and Christmas holidays.
Best regards, Rade Zagorac