Basketball coach Andrea Trinchieri from FC Bayern: Big gestures, good heart

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Andrea Trinchieri: Fevered on the sidelines - sometimes it goes too far

Photo: Markus Fischer / imago images / Passion2Press

There was a lot of excitement recently at Andrea Trinchieri.

"It's unbelievable," the FC Bayern basketball coach scolded at the end of last week in the direction of the BBL league.

The scheduling of the »Top Four« cup final tournament had excited the coach, an appointment so shortly before the start of the EuroLeague playoffs in the evening against Olimpia Milano (8.45pm).

Trinchieri, 52, likes to get a little louder, but this time the anger was wasted strength. Due to two positive corona findings among finalists BG Göttingen, the event last weekend was canceled. Now the Bayern basketball hunters could fly well rested to Trinchieri's native city of Milan: to the first play-off game of a German club in the history of the highest European basketball league.

It is thanks to the coach that this historic event even happened.

He is a guy who stands out in the public image mainly because of his passionate temperament during the games.

Sometimes it looks like something out of an opera, the grand gestures, the passion.

This is great entertainment.

Away from the field, Trinchieri should be a sensitive and calm character, he is known as a clever pacemaker with a feeling for the right approach.

He once said of his style: "I don't want to be boring."

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Well received by the professionals: Andrea Trinchieri (r.) And Paul Zipser

Photo: Tobias Hase / dpa

It was only nine months ago that Trinchieri took over a tired and sobering team that, under his predecessor Oliver Kostić, had already failed in the quarter-finals at Ludwigsburg in the final tournament for the German championship in June 2020.

In Trinchieri, Bayern's managing director Marko Pešić found a coach of his dreams, who had already led Brose Bamberg to three German championship titles in the BBL between 2014 and 2018, most recently twice Serbian cup winners with Partizan Belgrade and who should now bring Bayern back on the road to success.

Trinchieri's approach from day one was to "unleash" the players, as he himself said, "to get them out of their comfort zone."

The team is currently third in the league.

According to Pešić, the pre-season training camp in South Tyrol in September was decisive for the internal climate.

»Andrea managed to win the trust of the players in Bruneck.

Here they saw that he not only has professional, but also high social skills, that criticism is never intended as a personal attack, but only to make the players better. "

The »icebreaker moment«

Access and ex-NBA pro JaJuan Johnson (36 games for the Boston Celtics) was amazed when Trinchieri let him do push-ups like an F-junior player due to technical deficiencies.

But Trinchieri can also laugh at himself.

When he was convinced that he had not explained an exercise to a player well, he would go down on the floor and punish himself with push-ups.

The team stood by and applauded, Bayern professional Wade Baldwin later called the action the »icebreaker moment«.

Trinchieri attaches great importance to small details, something the chef of the team hotel should also find out at the training camp in Bruneck.

The hobby chef Trinchieri let him know that spaghetti carbonara is not made with cream, but only with an egg and a dash of oil.

But Trinchieri also goes over the top, as last at the end of March after a defeat at the BBL, when he was banned from playing a game with his coach colleague Pedro Calles and a referee due to unsportsmanlike conduct and had to pay a fine of 2000 euros.

However, the success in the EuroLeague outshines everything.

Trinchieri's euphoria was also enormous when, after the decisive 71:70 over Žalgiris Kaunas, he lit a cigar on the penultimate match day and announced: "I'm going to drink an Olympic pool full of red wine."

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Trinchieri: Once started at Olimpia Milano as an assistant coach

Photo: Markus Fischer / imago images / Passion2Press

The players say they became disgusting on the defensive under Trinchieri: "Nobody likes to play against us," said Bayern international Paul Zipser.

And then there is the enormous will that characterizes the players of chief motivator Trinchieri.

"We have already shot a lot of games under him," said Zipser about the new team spirit.

Bayern secured ten of the 21 victories in the EuroLeague after being ten points and more behind.

A very special component, however, is the mood.

Before the training sessions, Trinchieri keeps hugging his players, talking to them and listening to them.

"It's really fun every day with the coach," says Zipser.

It's the little things, apparently.

The club now hopes to establish itself permanently at the top of Europe. The new hall in the Olympiapark will open in 2022, with 12,500 spectators almost twice as many spectators as the current venue in the old Rudi-Sedlmayer-Halle. Will Andrea Trinchieri be there too? The decision is still pending. Even if Marko Pešić, President Herbert Hainer and Uli Hoeneß plead for the coach to stay, Trinchieri has not yet declared himself. He wants to do that by the beginning of May.

Perhaps Bayern will have taken the next step by then. After two away games in Milan (April 20/22), the Munich team on April 28th. Home right, other dates would be April 30th in Munich and May 4th in Milan. A qualification for the »Final Four« of the four best European teams in Cologne at the end of May - that would be a real sensation.