The Brazilian Confederation of Basketball (CBB) announced today that Aleksandar Petrovic has resigned as coach of the Brazilian men’s team. The official justification is that he chose to continue working only at the club, Pesaro, from Italy, with which the CBB encouraged him to get it right.
“Two months ago, Petrovic took over Pesaro and, at this moment, after reflection, he decided to continue exclusively with the Italian team, a decision respected by the CBB”, justified the CBB, which thanked the technician for the services.
In July, the CBB welcomed the idea of Petrovic, who since 2018 had been dedicated exclusively to the Brazilian team, also working at a club. In a note to the column at the time, CBB said the idea was “interesting from a technical point of view”. “Just as athletes train every day, having a coach working daily at a club is good for him and for Brazilian basketball,” said the organization at the time.
At that time, Petrovic was also talking about having two jobs. “My desire is to continue to see the national team, but also to get involved in the daily rhythm of training,” he wrote on Twitter, in Portuguese. He had also indicated that he wanted to take two players with him to Italy: Leo Demetrio and Bruno Caboclo, but he only got the first one. The second closed with São Paulo.
Petrovic, who was paid by the Olympic Committee of Brazil (CBB), failed in the two most important competitions in which he coached the national team. With him, Brazil was only 13th in the 2019 World Cup and, this year, it failed to qualify for the Olympics, losing to Germany in the decisive game of the Pre-Olympic. After the game, he blamed the athletes who didn’t go to the tournament for the defeat, exempting his own work.
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