Georgian national team hosted Germany in another match of World Cup 2019 Qualifiers and lost with 10 points – 77:87. The team trained by Ilias Zouros lost 70:79 with Germany in the first round of the tournament in the city of Chemnitz on November 23. Today, despite the full hall, they were not able to take revenge.
The coach was satisfied with the players’ attitude. Ilia Zuros said, that boys have done maximum of their capabilities to gain victory, but the rival turned out to be stronger. Indeed, Germans have played together for a long time. They also lacked strong players, but those who were playing are in the leading European leagues and have far more experience than Georgians.
All the players of the Georgian team, who went on the playground, really did everything to win but the Germans advanced from the very beginning and retained their lead before the end of the match. Georgians tried very hard to reduce the difference and tie the game, but finally, Germany gained the victory.
The Georgian national team has suffered a third defeat in the current cycle, but it is almost guaranteed that they will play in the second qualifying round of the World Cup. The Georgian team will hold the last two games of the first qualifying round in Tbilisi – June 29 with Austria and July 2 with Serbia.
Ilias Zouros (head coach of Georgian national team):
“I would like to say big thanks to the fans, who supported us, it’s great to play in full gym here, in Tbilisi. I am very satisfied and extremely proud of my players. As you know, with this system we do not have enough time to prepare, we don’t have days to practice together and we have new players also. In the first window we had Manuchar Markoishvili, now he was out, in the first game we had Tsintsadze, now he was out, Sanadze, Shengelia, Shermadini, Burjanadze – they all were out. So everybody understands that this is totally different team. it is very difficult to play good basketball when you are few days together, basketball is a game of chemistry, it’s a team sport and it’s hard to function as a team, so in this few days, we did the best. We did great job in Austria, we won the game on the road. Now we are focused on the last window. I’m very optimistic for our team.”
Anatoli Boisa:
“I’m really proud of my team and coaching stuff. We tried to do our best, we fought till the end, but unfortunately, made couple of mistakes. I really appreciate the fans, who came and supported us, it’s allways a huge pleasure, to play in Tbilisi, in the full gym.
Henrik Rodl (head coach of German national team):
“We are very excited to get this win here, in Georgia. I think we played very well in the first four games. Georgia gave us a great fight today, they played very hard. They played till the end, so this was very, very difficult game for us, until the end, we wasn’t sure that we would win.”
