Israel team hopes to open Euro 2021 qualifying on the right foot on Thursday • Goal: return to the big tournament

• Ketch. The team starts the journey to Euro 2021

  Photo:

  Maor Alexasci

1. The Israel National Team opens the European Championship Qualifying Campaign 2021. The blue-and-white team will be in the first team together with Spain, Poland and Romania, and the opening game will be Thursday (19:45, Israel time) in Glibice against the Poles, and four days later it will reach Drive There is no Romania team.

According to FIBA's format, encouraging Ketch and his assistant Dror Cohen will hardly have time for training. Tonight and tomorrow the team will practice, and already on Wednesday morning will fly to Poland, where you will have one training in the hall where the game will be held.

2. Over the weekend, the professional staff published the extended roster, and after training in the third, the roster will be reduced to 13 players who will fly to Poland. Gal Meckel, who suffered a recent injury and will also serve as captain in the upcoming campaign, will join the flight, and it will only be clear after training that he is fit and decides whether to register him or leave him out of 12.

As we wrote last month, members of the Basketball Association came to understand with the Maccabi that Dani Abadia and Jake Cohen will train today and tomorrow with the team, and then team up with their team, who will fly to Spain for the Euroleague game on Friday against Valencia. The two are on the team and will be on the roster for Romania, according to the agreement drafted, Yuval Sussman was also scheduled to join the team, but due to his injury he will not be available to the professional team.

secretly. Building on it // Photo: Oded Karni

On the extended roster sent to teams a few weeks ago, three nationals appeared, all of whom were Hapoel Holon players - Richard Howell, Joe Alexander and T J Cline. On the roster released last week, Howell's name, which is not in good shape, has already been scrapped. Of the two to appear for the opening workout, TJ Klein is a priority.

3. Unlike the recent campaign, where the non-promotion to the World Cup was forgiven (some might say too much) due to the regret process, for the upcoming campaign, there are high union expectations and there are some who are secretly talking about reaching the quarterfinals for the first time since 2003.

The team builds on the roster that began to form in the recent campaign with players such as Tamir Blatt, Yuval Sussman, Nimrod Levy, Idan Zalmanson, Tomer Ginat and others, combined with great talents such as Danny Abadia, Yam Madar and Noam Spokesperson, which are of great interest around the world, plus good players like Jake Cohen, John Dibertolomeo and possibly TJ Leaf of the Indiana Pacers, who may be coming directly to the tournament in the summer of 2021. In the meantime, we will settle for two wins this week to start the campaign on the right foot.