The end-of-season assessments at home continue BasketBall Gallarate.
Thus, after the words of the biancoblu coach, Alberto Mazzetti, it is the turn of the honorary president, as well as Main Spnsor of BBG, Thomas Valentino.
Let’s start with a general evaluation of the season. What is your opinion?
“It can only be an absolutely negative assessment. Failure, no: I would like to make Antetokounmpo’s words my own from some time ago when, after not having repeated his success in the NBA, he was asked if that had been a failure season and he responded by saying that failure does not exist in sport. There are years that are needed to grow, in transition and as far as I’m concerned, in learning, which make it clear that, in a society, hybrid situations cannot exist. Everyone must decide their position and role clearly, being able to then “sell” it directly during the year, so as not to allow anyone, in this case the players, to be able to cling to any excuse to justify returns mistakes or badly played games. With this, and I clarify, I am not referring to Luca Ciardiello who is the Sports Director and also the player, but also to me who is the Honorary President, I am talking about companions who sometimes are there and sometimes not. All this was missing because all of us didn’t understand what type of championship it would be from the beginning of the year. The great regret remains but also the belief that, if we had made the National B championship last year with this team, it would have gone differently. The players would have been better suited to that type of basketball. Our belief that we were the strongest penalized us, it meant that some teams brought us back to earth with beatings and when we realized this we were like a boxer who takes a lot of punches and when he manages to understand the situation he is already at a difficult point to be able to recover. We tried with the 7 consecutive victories in the first group, but it was like when a marathon runner tries to sprint halfway to recover but then finds himself with his tongue on the ground in the last kilometers and his head feeling even worse. We had many injuries at the end of the season: Passerini, Mercante, Hidalgo and Moscatelli and some who were down to the bone in terms of physical energy like De Bettin. But I think the biggest problem was mental, because we are talking about a team that experienced continuous up-downs during the season and which then condemned us to the Silver Group. You can try to beat everything but such mental and psychological evil, no.”
You tell me a mental problem as the main one of the whole season but I ask you, instead, if going back would you buy Stefano Laudoni again?
“Absolutely not. Going back to the initial discussion, this was another step in the year that allowed me to grow. I will no longer accept certain dynamics and promises with players and agents, I will no longer look at the palmares but at the players’ eyes, to understand if they have that fire inside to throw themselves into every training and match with great desire and not because they are coming to park themselves, complaining like a pussy about the traffic on the motorway or the distance from home to Gallarate, as if they didn’t have Google Maps to understand how far it is to come to train and play before signing the contract. These are people who no longer serve me in Gallarate and have never served me even in the world of work. People who don’t throw themselves into the fire for those who pay for their work, for those who regularly pay their salary, for a coach who puts you in the conditions to work at your best and a Sports Director who has chosen you to earn that salary, for me it’s not a man and can stay at home.”
With coach Gambaro he won a C Gold championship, lived a year in National B, the first in Gallarate’s history, doing very well. What do you think didn’t work this year?
“First of all, I’m happy to be able to do interviews saying exactly what I then report back to the locker room. After the very heavy defeat in Quarrata I spoke to the players, bringing up Gambaro, Viceconti and Mazzetti, all people who in their own way worked seriously and tried everything to make the season go well. It’s clear that if you find men who throw themselves into the fire to protect you, you manage to obtain certain results, vice versa if unfortunately you make the wrong choices on players, then what happened this year happens. So, was it Gambaro’s fault? No. Was it Viceconti’s fault? Neither. Was it Mazzetti’s fault? Much less. They tried to reverse the fortunes of a team that then proved to carry the same drama with it all the way through. As I said in the locker room, don’t think that the choice to change the coaching staff didn’t weigh on me and the managers. The first to pay, in the sports system, are always the coaches, but then time is a gentleman. We lost a lot of points in the first leg, the formula of this championship led us to pay a lot for the negative start of the season and not even with so many victories in the second part of the season were we able to straighten out a year which, I repeat, was much more negative for what is done by the players rather than by the staff.”
After Gambaro you turned to Mazzetti, a coach who is different in many ways from his predecessor. At the end of the season I ask you if you think you made the right choice by hiring him not only for this second part of the year but also for the future?
“I think I made the right choice like when I decided to end the relationship with Sassi. I think there are cycles: there was with Sassi, there was with Gambaro and Viceconti and they must be absolutely proud of what they have achieved as I am of having a beautiful memory that will remain indelible, because reaching a National B championship is not from everyone and why doing it the way we did it with the team we had last year is a lot. Would I make the choice to take Mazzetti again? Absolutely yes, because unfortunately cycles end and you have to be good at opening new ones when you have to do so. The arrival of coach Mazzetti has given me the conviction, in recent months, that he is a figure with whom I can open a very interesting new cycle and bring some satisfaction, because he has the soul of a winner, an absolute and methodical dedication to work, It makes the players “spit blood” during the week during training, and it’s something that’s very close to my idea of experiencing basketball.”
Speaking of players, last summer you built a Gallarate with big status, what idea will you follow this year?
“The line we decided to follow last year turned out to be wrong, so we certainly won’t start with proclamations and the idea of being the steamroller of the championship next year. Our values will be humility, hunger and work in the gym, beyond the names that will make up the roster. I want people who sit at the negotiating table and show themselves as men, unlike influencers and others who take basketball as a pastime. I want people who throw themselves under the train for their team and club. We want a roster of people who want to work and create a group to be friends on and off the pitch.”
How do we start again off the pitch, and I’m referring to the sponsor side, after a season like this?
“We are at work. I don’t give any guarantees because, when a very negative year ends and you lose a lot of enthusiasm from the whole environment, you have to be good at knowing how to stop the bleeding and bring back that enthusiasm which is the driving force behind building the new season. We are working in this sense, starting from the wonderful base of our fans, in particular the Indomitables who this year have shown a unique attachment, also following us away. We have led these kids to prefer being in the gym rather than in a disco or anything else on Saturday nights and it is one of the best victories we could have achieved. The first from which to start again for the next season.”
Alessandro Burin
