Dragan Sakota spoke about AEK’s 93-80 loss to Olympiacos in the Stoiximan Super Cup semifinal, noting that the lack of game rhythm was evident, as his team hadn’t had time to hold enough practices.

The AEK coach described Olympiacos as the best team in Europe and emphasized that there are several areas that need improvement moving forward. As he explained, official matches are what will give AEK the necessary rhythm, with the second leg serving as the key to the team’s improvement.

At the same time, he clarified that references to absences are not meant as an excuse, but rather to explain the varying levels of readiness among the players. As he noted, some players who have been with the team since day one have adapted better, while several others are not yet at the same level of competitive readiness, which is causing the ups and downs.

Here’s what he said in detail:

“It was obvious that we’re lacking match experience; we didn’t have enough training sessions to be as competitive as we’d like to be. We were facing the best team in Europe; there are certain things we’ll definitely improve as we go along. The game sets the pace; we’re still quite far behind, but we can take some positives from today’s game. By constantly talking about the absences, we’re not looking for excuses; we’re simply trying to explain certain things.

If we have consecutive official games, we don’t expect to put on outstanding performances, as we did at the start of the last two seasons. But as we play, we’ll make adjustments—not right away, but repetition will help us improve. We’re optimistic about our progress, but we’re a little nervous about the start.

Some players who’ve been here from day one have adapted better, but we have many players at different levels of readiness. That’s why we’ve had our ups and downs. What I wanted most today was for us to be more solid defensively, but it doesn’t depend solely on us, because we’re playing against a very strong EuroLeague team. It’s early in the season; we’re not drawing any conclusions based on today.”

On the empty arena:

“It’s hard to explain to a foreigner when they ask what’s going on. People see it and judge for themselves. I can’t comment, but we see that some teams have sold out their season tickets. I believe this is the strongest league Greece has seen since the ’90s, when I’ve been here. A huge gap has opened up in recent years; only teams with big budgets like PAOK and Aris can stay in contention. We hope to have a competitive team of our own.”

On Souli Markopoulos: “He

was a man of great character; we lost someone who contributed so much, so suddenly. My condolences to his family.”

*photo source: KYPE