Achille Polonara looks to Olimpia Milano for his new project
Achille Polonara wants to stay in the basketball world even after retiring as a player, announced last Monday after a long absence due to illness. In the meantime, however, the 34-year-old from Marche revealed that he is already working on a new career as head coach, and that he is looking to Olimpia Milano for one of his main sources of inspiration.
“I am already gathering information to understand how this project can evolve. As an Azzurro athlete, I already have the opportunity to enroll in the regional coach’s course in Campania and then the national course in Bormio,” Polonara explained to the ‘Gazzetta dello Sport.’I hope to be able to do that already later this year.”
Interested in becoming a coach, Polonara has identified two from whom he would like to draw inspiration. “I feel close to Pozzecco in terms of mentality,” he said, “although I realize that sometimes he goes too far. However, I find myself in his type of approach in terms of attitude and communication with the players. I would like to be a different coach, more permissive with the team. I would like to be empathetic and build a relationship based on trust. To have, in short, a Peppe Poeta style.”
The decision to hang up his shoes came at the end of a season spent entirely away from the parquet, after a long and very hard ordeal. The long ordeal had begun in October 2023 with surgery to remove a testicular neoplasm, but the hardest blow had come in June 2025 with a diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia, followed by chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and finally a bone marrow transplant performed in September. A venous thrombosis had then put him in a coma for about ten days, and additional heart surgery was needed in February this year to obtain competitive fitness.
In spite of everything, Polonara had never given up hope for a return to the court. Just a few weeks ago, in April, he was still training in the facility provided by Unicusano Avellino Basket, promising the fans of Dinamo Sassari – with whom he was under contract – that “Polon-Air would be back.” A purpose also fueled by the warmth he received from the Sardinian club and President Sardara, whose trust had transformed the player’s goal: no longer just to recover his health, but also to return to the parquet.
The news of his retirement therefore surprised many, arriving like a bolt out of the blue just on the morrow of the end of the regular season, which saw, among other things, the relegation of Dinamo Sassari itself. In the message posted on social media, Polonara had greeted the basketball world with emotionally charged words, “I wish this moment would never come. I’ve tried, resuming individual training, but I understand that it’s time to say no more to basketball played because I will no longer be the player I used to be and I want you to remember me for who I was.”
During the long months of stop, Polonara also found the time and strength to publish his own autobiography, “My Second Half: A Basketball Story, A Life Story,” written together with Marco Garavaglia. “Telling my story was an idea I had for the end of my career, but I decided to do it now, during this stop. In the hospital this summer, I started writing it. I’m not thinking about basketball but about life, because I’m playing the most important game off the court,” he had explained. It is a work that recounts not only the sporting successes – championships and cups won in Italy, Spain, Turkey and Lithuania, 94 appearances in the national team with 596 points scored – but above all the human battle of a man who knew how to get back up every time, finding in his wife Erika and children Vitoria and Achille junior the strength not to give up.
