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Real Madrid is a multi-sports club and right now its two most famous teams, football and basketball, are playing the knockout stages of the European cups. The more famous of the two is that of football, which is the reigning European champion, has won the Champions League 14 times (more than anyone else) and competes every year to win it: this season, still coached by Carlo Ancelotti, it’s in the semi-final against Manchester City.
But Real Madrid also holds the record for European victories in basketball, in this case in the Euroleague, and always competes to win, with slightly lower success rates. Recently, however, it has made people talk even more than football for everything that happened in the playoffs played against Partizan Belgrade, in which it became, among other things, the first team in the history of the Euroleague to recover an early 2-0 deficit at this stage of the tournament.
The confrontation between Real Madrid and Partizan began with two surprising consecutive away victories of the Serbian team coached by the expert Zeljko Obradovic, the most successful in the history of the Euroleague with 9 titles as coach, two of which he won with Partizan and Real Madrid . The second victory of the series had also arrived “forfeited”: in the last quarter of the match, two minutes from the end, the Real players had in fact unleashed a brawl that had involved both teams and caused the expulsion of too many players to be able to continue playing.
The images of the fight had been filmed and discussed for days, as unpublished for violence and involvement in a basketball game of that level. Then came the disqualifications – judged rather soft – for four players from both teams, including Guerschon Yabusele, the Real Madrid big man who had knocked down an opponent, the Australian Dante Exum, with a wrestling move.
From there the series moved to Belgrade, where the Serbian crowd, already known for being one of the noisiest in Europe, welcomed Real Madrid with boos, chants and a rather hostile environment for everything that had happened in race-2. But Real reopened the series with an 82-80 comeback win. And two days later, again in Belgrade, he also won game-4 thus obtaining the advantage of playing the decisive match at home.
Game 5 was therefore played on Wednesday evening in Madrid. At the end of the first half, Partizan had already gained a 16-point lead, but Real Madrid’s comeback started once again in the second half, helped by the entry into the field of Sergio Rodriguez known as the “Chacho”. In a not exactly brilliant season so far, the former Milan player managed to play one of his best matches, ending with 19 points, 6 assists and an essential contribution to the progress of the match.
With the 98-94 final, Real Madrid thus won one of the most difficult series ever played and qualified for the Final Four, where they will meet Barcelona, the other big favorite to win the Euroleague, in a Spanish derby already very heartfelt in itself. The match will be played on May 19, as will the one between Olympiakos and Monaco, from which the other finalist will come out.
– Read also: What is “failure” in sport?