Coach Gianluca Folchi will be the new technical director of Despar 4 Torri Ferrara. At the end of the season of his return to the Granata after fifteen years, which saw him as second coach on the bench of the Regional Division 1 team, the new management of the 4 Torri decided to entrust Folchi’s experience with the task of directing the entire staff and the technical area of the club: with the aim of consolidating the foundations of the Granata youth sector.
Between the two adventures at Despar, Folchi coached between Serie C, D, Promotion and youth teams at Cento, Scuola Basket Ferrara, Baricella, Audax Ferrara and Veni Basket, until arriving at Nuovo Basket Rovigo, where he led the team in the second part of the 2022-2023 season.
“I have good feelings, and I thank the president and the new board for their trust”, these are Folchi’s first words as Granata technical director. “I will put my knowledge and skills at the service of society, and I will do my utmost in this new role of mine”.
The objective is to strengthen Despar’s youth sector: “We want to consolidate our youth sector, also thanks to the recent collaboration with Cestistica Argenta, to find new synergies and join forces where alone it is not possible to do the good of the kids . We hope, between the two of us, to achieve this aim: but it is a new path, we are at the beginning, let’s see what it will materialize into.”
Looking ahead, some of these young athletes will take to the field wearing the first team shirt: “Raising the quality level of the youth sector to build players at home who are also useful to the first team. This presupposes medium-long term work, the results cannot be seen from one year to the next. But it remains a primary objective of this new approach.”
First team that Folchi followed on the bench for the whole year: “The boys had an absolutely positive championship: at the beginning of the season we would all have signed up. It’s clear that losing a final so clearly leaves a bitter taste in the mouth, but we acknowledge that we have had a great season: it would have been worse to lose it by two points, with regret. But we recognize the superiority of the opponent.”
