The calendar is what it is. And you can’t fight against that. Unicaja plays a key match for its continental future on Tuesday of next week on the court of AEK in Athens. But it will do so with an added problem to the sporting challenge that visiting the Athenian mousetrap already entails, and that is that it will do so with less than 48 hours rest compared to this weekend’s Liga Endesa match.
The point is that Unicaja will receive Barça this Sunday at 5:00 p.m. at the Martín Carpena and will visit the Greek capital two days later, on Tuesday the 21st, at 6:30 p.m. That is between the end of the clash against the culés and the start of the duel against the Athenians there will be approximately 47 hours of margin, including a Malaga-Athens trip.
Unicaja has not been able to change the schedule of this game to Saturday because Barça has a Euroleague matchday this Friday, which makes it impossible to play even on Sunday morning, which would have been a lesser evil.
The comparative injury becomes more evident if we take into account that AEK will not play their League match this weekend. He was scheduled to travel this Saturday at 6:30 p.m. to the Promitheas Patras court, but the match has been postponed for non-sporting reasons, which in this case favor the interests of the rival and clearly harm those of the typesetters.
General strike in Greece
The “problem” is that the Promitheas is trapped in London without being able to return to Greece until next Sunday. The Patras team played a Eurocup match this Wednesday in the English capital, but was unable to return home on Thursday due to the general strike called in Greece, which left the country paralyzed, without services and without means of transportation. Promitheas lost their return tickets and are not available to return to Patras until next Sunday, which has led to the postponement of their league match scheduled for this weekend against the next cashier rival.
The truth is that this mishap is a relief for AEK, who will have six whole days to prepare for Tuesday’s final against Unicaja. It must be remembered that Athenians and compositors will decide this Tuesday, in the last day of the Group K round of 16 of the Basketball Champions League, who finishes first in the group and has home field advantage in the quarterfinal playoff and who goes to the quarterfinals without the home court factor in their favour, a question that seems key in the attempt to reach the Final Four next May.