The president of the Trapani Sharks Valerio Antonini was a guest on the “Dazn Got Game” broadcast and touched on various topics including the objectives for the next season in the LBA and on the roster that will be built. These are his words:
About next season: “The goal is to win the scudetto. We are trying to buy players who can complete the team, complete a growth path that has taken place during the year. We have signed two extraordinary players like Alibegovic, who is a Euroleague player and has a contract like a Euroleague player, we are trying to sign high-level Italian players who are in the national team and we have identified four foreign players who can complete the team for have twelve top-level players who can at least try to get into the top four to avoid meeting Bologna and Milan before the semi-finals. I will be satisfied if we at least reach the semi-finals.”
On the interest in Teodosic: “We contacted him, also speaking with his agent, trying to bring him to Trapani already this season, but he would never come to A2. Then I invested in Stefano Gentile, having Matteo Imbrò already among us I found myself in the position of no longer being able to deal with him, now he has renewed with Red Star, but I had made him my first objective”.
On market objectives: “I saw the championship final, there are great players like Tonut, Abass and Melli. We have to target players of this level, then we’ll see if the conditions are right, but these must be the objectives.”
On Armani and Zanetti: “We are talking about two characters who are almost unattainable for me at the moment. We know that we are faced with two extraordinary giants, who make incredible investments and do so in cities that are also responsible for that type of investment. Let’s talk about Milan and Bologna. Unfortunately here it is still too virgin territory to be able to think about doing things every year as they do them”.
On the defeat in the semi-final of the A2 Italian Cup: “I thank Daniele Parente, it wasn’t easy to change coaches during the year but I was forced by two factors: the first was that in the six games preceding the semi-final of the Italian Cup the team had a big decline and I realized that it had lost the feeling between the players and the coach, different factions were then being created in the locker room which I then closed immediately with the change of coach. The players knew that the coach pays the first time and then they pay, if I had to take six more players I would take them. It was a problem linked to the result I wanted to achieve, I wanted to send a message. Five months later I can say I made the right choice, Andrea Diana has just lost five matches, of which only two between the quarter-finals and the semi-final. He won a sensational match that will remain in the history of Trapani. It marked the change from the national vision of Trapani to a new positive wind that sport is bringing.”
