FCBARCELONA.CAT

07.03.2007 12:52

“We have to be able to play badly and still win”

Dusko Ivanovic is pleased with the way his team has come on in recent weeks. But Barça’s basketball coach is a perfectionist, and wants his team to get so good that they even win when they play badly.

A Winterthur Barça win in the Polish city of Sopot on Thursday (Euroleague Top 16 game four, 18.00, C33), combined an Efes loss at Panathinaikos, could see Barcelona mathematically through to the quarter finals of the competition. But their minds will not be on what is happening in Greece. “It is nice that we could already be in the quarter finals after just four games, but right now all we are worrying about is Prokom”, said Dusko Ivanovic.

Palau game no yardstick

The Winterthur FC Barcelona boss has noted a lot of changes to Prokom, saying “It isn’t just the guard, Justin Hamilton. The Poles showed in the first phase that they can beat anybody and they have grown in confidence.” For which reason, the first meeting between the two sides should not be taken as an indication of what to expect on Thursday night. “Prokom is a very compete team, they are strong on interior plays, with experienced players and the way things have gone over the last few weeks will have boosted their morale.”

The Montenegrin believes the key to the match is “how we play ourselves. We have to be prepared to suffer, to fight, and even play badly yet still make sure of the win”.

The road to perfection

Winterthur Barça have made huge progress over the last month or so, winning the Cup and rising to fourth in the ACB (with a 3-0 streak against a series of teams that have hit on poor form), and the immediate objective is to perfect the final details, with ‘perfection’ already having been a word used by Dusko Ivanovic last Sunday after the Polaris World Murcia game: “We need to find the perfect game, but that won’t happen at any old time. When the moment comes, it will happen.”