Euroleague, Marco Belinelli speaks out on Virtus Bologna’s ambitions

Marco Belinelli boosts Virtus’ European ambitions

Virtus Bologna’s Euroleague season last year è was a season with two faces: for several weeks the Felsinei were among the front-runners and seemed on their way to the playoffs, but in the second half something jammed and Luca Banchi’s team è was forced to play the play-in, losing the final playoff for the eighth seed against Baskonia.

Marco Belinelli, from the gathering of the Black VUs, personally emphasizes that he wants to put last year behind him, showing all his desire to do well in the most important European competition: "There are at least 6 level teams, also from the economic point of view, very strong, on paper. But it means nothing, and we proved it last year, in the first part of the season".

"And even after that,” added the HCL captain, “I think it was not a physical decline, last year in February we paid a lot for the simultaneous absence of Hackett and Cordinier, two quintet players, failing to win those 2-3 games that would have allowed us to play for sixth-seventh place. The key will be the physical part, getting to be well in the January-February-March" period.

"On paper,” Belinelli further explained, “we have a desire to do better than last year, although until December and early January è it was an illegal Euroleague, we had never felt such heatì except when I was 16-17 years old and training with Ginobili, not even in the years with Milos (Teodosic, ed.)".

"We want to restart from that and do better than last year, but we start with our feet on the ground, having many new players and rookies in the Euroleague. We are not afraid, it will be a tough Euroleague becauseè all the teams are very strong, all the games both home and away are complicated, but we have a lot of desire to do well" concluded the former NBA player.