Dear members of the belgian BB community,
I'm already close to my 4th month as U21 belgian head coach. I wanted to communicate earlier about the team but it was difficult for me to find the appropriate time. Now, i can start with this post.
Already 4 months have past and lots of things happen to us :) (with a lucky star somewhere upon my head ... ^^) !
Season 68 :
First of all, i wanted to say a huge thank you to all coaches that provided belgian players to the team last season. Giodeb (Tirmarche "Walkshoot" & Missotten) - Pmikel (Van Riet) - Ewie (Boerkamp) - MrCh (Mansuy & Van Beurden) - JordiBall (Van bossche) - Guiguits (Ibrahim & Baele) - Arnaud P (Darmon) ...
It was an amazing season for the U21 team to be honest ! I started with a new team to learn and make it mine. A lot of dicussion with Joe about the team and the expectation were not high at all. I had the feeling that reaching the second round of the EC would be already a huge thing.
First round : We had must wins against Malta, Crna Gora and Moldova (those ones were mandatory with our team to win). Huge wins against Latvia and Ukraine by ONE POINT in each game. I was sweating at the end of both of those ones :D Those wins and the fact that Czech Republic wins against Ukraine let us reach the second round !
Second round : At the beginning, it was a bonus round (after also discussion with Joe) with maybe one possible win. We were rip out by Italia and Spain and i was completly wrong against Bosnia (Inside PAM against RnG). Our main success was the W against Greece (not an easy one). Here is were magic may happens and also always listen to experienced coaches !! I needed to win by more than 15 points to go to the second chance game and it was very difficult to figure it out how to play against Estonia with the HCA. Joe said to me, please consider the fact that if i would be at the situation of the estonian coach, i would certainly play neutral. The end of the story is that the PAM was good and we win by more than 15 points to reach a final game against Chile. Now, we are playing the world cup in season 69 !
Season 69
I'll speak about my objectives since april and where we are considering our main goal "To be ready for the EC in S72" but also, for season 70.
I didn't had the oppurtunity to scout completly the S68 draft class but it is now the case for the S69 draft. With the help of Joe, we did find a group of trainer (thank you very much for them already (Ventola, Jordiball, Hoxiz, JackyD and all the others) and prospects to train for the S72 campaign ! It is now really exiting to prepare those players and to follow training plans. A lot of players need to be followed and it represents a lot of scouting efforts for me.
I had also the opportunity to follow players for the next european tournament so we will try again to do our best.
Final word concerning the S69 world cup, we are in a very diffcult group composed of : China - USA - France - Lituania - Spain - Uruguay and Algeria.
My main objective is achieved with the wins against Uruguay and Algeria. The other teams in this group are far more better than us .... we will see what happens ;)
Please be convinced of my commitment in our U21 team !
Best regards, Met vriendelijke groet, Bien à vous,
Melarius