Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (EFE).- The president of Gran Canaria, Sitapha Savané, considered this Thursday that “it has been a great first round” and “a great start” for the yellow team, since it has achieved the first objective” that had been set, to qualify for the Copa del Rey.
“We can be very satisfied with the ten victories that we have not achieved at this club since 2017”, Savané celebrated at a press conference held in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, in which both the board of directors and the coach, Jaka Lakovic, have made a balance of the first round of the season.
The president has recognized that the team “has gone through a more complicated moment of results”, but has also recalled that, “at the same time, the team is an outstanding leader” in the Eurocup.
“Returning to the Copa del Rey was the first goal we had, a great objective for all of us”, in addition to “an outstanding debt they had with the fans”, he said to consider that it was “an anomaly” the fact that the team was so long out of this competition.
Savané added that these good results come “with a coach who is in his first season.”
In his opinion, “what was expected would have been a period of adaptation” but he assured that the ‘Granca’ “is very happy with Jaka Lakovic, with the entire squad and with the performance they have had” in this first round.
In this sense, the president has assured that he is “very calm for the person who is directing this ship”, in reference to the coach, “because he has maximum ambition”. “There are things at a technical-tactical level that can be improved and I feel very calm knowing that they are working on it every day”, he said.
“We have seen that the great projects in this country have had a lot of stability, such as Pablo Lasso’s Real Madrid and CB Canarias with Txus Vidorreta. When you have found the right person and people the job really is to keep it; sometimes doing something is doing nothing and ensuring that those who are there have the best possible conditions and supporting them to the fullest”, he pointed out about Lakovic’s continuity at the helm of the Gran Canaria squad.
Lakovic: We have reasons to be happy, but we must continue and improve
For his part, Jaka Lakovic stressed that the team has “reasons to be happy” after this first round, but must “continue, improve and try to play better every day and one hundred percent.”
“We are happy for qualifying for the Copa del Rey, for finishing the first round with ten victories and for doing things well in the Eurocup,” Lakovic said at a press conference in which the coach and managers took stock of the first round of the season.
The event was attended by the president of CB Gran Canaria, Sitapha Savané, the team’s sports director, Willy Villar, and the youth academy manager, Juanmi Morales, as well as the coach, who also spoke about the Copa del Rey derby and of the next league rival, Monbus Obradoiro.
Thus, Lakovic has expressed that the “Granca” “has gone through this first round of very good moments” and “others not so good”.
“But we pushed and had a good finish in the first round and we qualified on our own merits. With ten victories in the first round, in addition to qualifying for the Cup, it gives us a good grade to continue”, said the coach of the yellow team.
As for the draw that has paired “Granca” with Lenovo Tenerife in the quarterfinals of the Copa del Rey, Lakovic has said that they knew that they would have “one of the seeded heads” and that was the case, “with a derby very beautiful canary” in one of the tournaments, in his opinion, “most beautiful in Europe”.
“It will be a great challenge but we also have to try to enjoy it to the fullest”, Jaka Lakovic has advanced, who has added that the people from Gran Canaria now have “no more or less pressure” from the rival they have had, but rather they will face the clash “with all the ambition in the world knowing that Tenerife is a great rival and a team that has things very clear.” EFE
