MADRID, 20 May. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Real Madrid’s qualification for this Saturday’s Euroleague final against Turkey’s Anadolu Efes will allow the Madrid club to aspire to become continental champions in basketball and football for the second time in its history.
After beating Barça in the Clasico, Pablo Laso’s team joined Carlo Ancelotti’s to fight for the European Cup in their respective sports. The Vitorian, who is looking for his third success, will be the first to try, while the Italian will try to be crowned for the fourth time on Saturday, May 28 in Paris against English Liverpool.
Interestingly, the two coaches already know what it means to coincide in this fight, only within Real Madrid’s reach at the moment, since they experienced it in 2014. Then, the football team won the ‘Décima’ in Lisbon against Atlético de Madrid ( 4-1), but days before the basketball team lost the ‘Ninth’ against Maccabi (98-86) in London.
That defeat prevented the double that had not been possible on the other two previous occasions, both in the 1960s. In 1962, the two sections lost their European Cup final, against the Portuguese Benfica (5-3) and against the Dinamo Tbilisi (90-83), and in 1964, basketball won the first of its ten trophies against the Czech Spartak, but football could not with Inter Italian (3-1).
But the last precedent, in 2018, is positive since the two teams achieved European glory and also has some similarities with what could happen. The Real Madrid soccer team, coached by Zinédine Zidane, closed its historic era with the ‘Thirteenth’ in kyiv by precisely defeating English Liverpool (3-1), while the basketball team, with Pablo Laso on the bench, achieved the ‘ Tenth’ in Belgrade and against a Turkish team, then Fenerbahce (85-80).
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