After the match of Georgian National Team, a press conference was held, head coach of the Georgian national team, Ilias Zuros and one of the heroes of the match – Andro Mamukelashvili talked in from of media representatives…
“I can’t find the words to congratulate my players – said Ilyasz Zuros – today they are pride of nation. They fought from the first to the last second. We played basketball for 50 minutes! We are missing leading basketball players, you know that. We are missing Goga and Toko. Some of us could not finish the game (laughs – Ed). Winning this match was very important for us! Also congratulations to my coaching staff – they did an amazing job these days.
The Greek captain of the Georgian national team spoke about the fans: “Besides, I also can’t find words to express my love for these people. I mean the fans. It was an amazing atmosphere, an unbelievable environment. They won us this game! They gave us the strength to fight harder and harder. And we won this match against a great team with high class basketball players and a very good coach. We have to concentrate; we don’t have the right to celebrate yet”.
What are the chances of Georgia leaving the group? “I want to say that we have not finished our work yet. This victory is good for confidence. In order to qualify from the group, we still need to win the last game against Montenegro and plus victory against Bulgaria is necessary. We will leave the group with 3 wins. If not, we need 2 wins and We will depend on other results as well. We should not think about what happened today and think about what will happen in the upcoming days. Once again: I congratulate the fans and wish the Turkish national team success in the next matches.”
Ilias Zuros said about the importance of the victory and the emotions he felt: “I enjoy every victory – especially such big victories! The Georgian national team is trying to grow and continue to progress. Unfortunately, this year we did not have all the basketball players. These are such emotions that you will never forget. I am very happy for my players, for our fans. Yesterday I was disappointed because we didn’t fight and made mistakes, but today, on the contrary, I’m happy because we showed who we are. We played especially well in defense.”
Sandro Mamukelashvili said at the press conference: “It was a great victory. There was a wonderful atmosphere in the arena! I can’t thank the fans enough. We have amazing supporters, they won the game for us. We lost the first two matches and the people still came to support us. In such an atmosphere, a good team like Turkey Playing with a team is very cool. It will be difficult for everyone in such an environment. I want to thank them! As the coach said, we are missing two best players. Everyone played amazingly, Andronikashvili, Jincharadze… everyone did an amazing job. Now we just have to stay focused. We have to calm down and think about the next matches.”
