Eurobasket quarterfinals: Italy's dream versus France's stability | Israel today

The French team has already started preparing for Serbia in the quarter-finals, it is already used to the underdog status.

But then came the sensation of the tournament and France will play tonight (18.15) against Italy in the fight to advance to the semi-finals.

Now, she sure isn't an underdog.

These are two stubbornnesses, each in its own way.

France is doing this with a team that is less good than expected and after coming out of a certain loss in the round of 16 against Turkey.

Italy does this after a failure in the early stage, which was followed by the most surprising surprise ever.

It will be a battle between Italy's momentum and France's near-constant success at major tournaments.

The expectations gauge of the Italian national team was like a roller coaster: great optimism on the background of promotion to the Olympic tournament last summer, then a change of direction downwards following the injury of the great star Danilo Gallinari near the start of the championship, later the expectations fell even further due to the fact that they did not take advantage of the home at home early and finished Only fourth which led her to a match with Serbia in the round of 16.

But now expectations have skyrocketed after the victory over Serbia.

In Italy you can already see a podium.

With the emotions and belief of the star of the tournament in recent days, coach Gianmarco Futsco, Italy "is in a dream", as he defined it.

Gianmarco was blown up.

Man of the hour, photo: AP

For France, the story of expectations is very clear: it is a regular candidate for a medal in the last decade, and has been on the podium in all major tournaments since 2011, with the exception of one.

The era of coach Vincent Cola, who took the reins in 2009, is mostly one of success.

Add to that the Olympic silver medal win this summer and much of that was built on the never-ending depth of the player pool.

The thing is that in this tournament France doesn't really live up to expectations despite reaching the top 8.

It turned out that even in the team with such a selection of players, there are those who are irreplaceable.

The main problems of Tamon lie in the positions of the coordinator and shooting from the outside.

Andrew Albisi is not a top European center back, and Toma Hertel comes in after not playing the last part of the season at Real Madrid.

Eli Okobo.

Weak tournament, photo: Reuters

In addition to that, the entire outside shooting burden is on Evan Fournier's shoulders, due to Eli Okubo's weakness.

Nando de Colo could have helped solve both of these problems, but he decided not to play this summer.

Nikola Batum could also help balance the team, but he also made the same decision.

All these bring us to an open game, without a favorite.

A fight in which physicality will play a central role between two teams for whom the entire tournament has changed: from a situation where both were already on their way home, because Serbia was supposed to stand in their way, they are now thinking far away.

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