At Euroleague Coaches Board in Antalya, we had a chance to talk with Euroleague Champion coach Chus Mateo about the differences between be an head coach or an assistant, his journey with Real Madrid, and cerveza.
This is EuroLeague Head Coaches Board. You were for a great part of your coaching career an assistant, and the 2023 EHCB Congress is the first ever with clinics and masterclasses of assistants. We heard their voices to understand how valuable is their role in a basketball team. For your experience as a former assistant and an actual head coach, what changes the most between the two tasks? How can an assistant make head coach’s job better and viceversa?
Everything change. It changes a lot! When you’re an assistant coach you don’t have full responsibility, you have to give only some advices to help the coach to understand something you’re studying deeper. It’s better to listen to them because it’s a different view. They can make you watch the game in a different matter. As a head coach you have bigger responsibilties, you have to make decisions. You have the biggest responsibility of a team: everything you decide it’s important for the team. It’s a whole different point of view and responsibility.
What changes for a player in a relation between him and an assistant and him and the head coach?
It switches so much. When you’re an assistant you’re trying to help them, you’re their shoulder when they complain. As a head coach you have to be stick with the rules and try to defer, that’s another way. The assistant is closer to players, sometimes you’re so close that you can listen their complains and even try sometimes to make these problems not to go to coach’s ears. You try to solve them by themselves. When you’re the head coach not everybody is gonna be happy because of decisions you’re gonna make…
Your first season as head coach in EuroLeague, you won. What can you see thinking about the future of EL? Will the introduction of Play-In Tournament help next seasons of EuroLeague and other european competitions?
In my opinion EuroLeague is the toughest competition of the world. Anyway we have to manage different competitions at the same time: it’s so tough, it’s not easy for coaches and players to combine the alternate between local leagues and EuroLeague. For this reason EL is tougher than NBA: we fiinished with 88 games this season and all of them, including matches against weaker and less structured opponents, are so important for both sides from the first day of the season till the end. Talking about 2022/2023, this season’s been especially tough: a lot of teams fight until the end to win championships, every game had such high specific weight.
Media and journalist tell basketball from external eye, coaches and players make basketball. We have a different point of view of the same object. You know better than anyone the amount of pressure by media members as Real’s head coach. How can we improve our relationship to create a better product? How can you help us and viceversa?
It depends on people. It’s on everyone. Relationships will always be good if we both decide to make them good. Basketball is becoming closer and closer to the fans: you can see even from inside moments befor the games, lots of interviews with players and coaches. You and fans can understand how teams live and work in every internal aspect. It’s easier now to understand all this.
Last question: last time we spoke to you was after Clásico’s win in EuroLeague semifinal in Kaunas. You said you’d go to drink a cerveza to take a little moment before the final. How was that cerveza? How was cerveza you drank after the final? Even better?
Cerveza is always good, especially when you win. Much much better!