Dubai Basketball has been behaving like a bull in a china shop for months. The Emirati club has burst into the EuroLeague with a big budget, signing players indiscriminately and challenging the established order of European basketball. And their latest move is the boldest of all: they have convinced Xavi Pascual to leave Barcelona this summer.
The Catalan coach will pay the 300,000 euros of his release clause out of his own pocket. The reason is simple: what Dubai offers him does not exist anywhere else in Europe. Pascual will become the coach with the highest contract in the history of continental basketball, a figure that speaks for itself about the ambitions of a franchise that has not come to participate, but to win.
And for that, they also need to win on the bench. The sports project that Emirati businessman Abdulla Saeed Juma Al Naboodah is building has an All-Star profile: Okobo, Blossomgame, Diallo, Diakite, and Mintz are already on the list, with Sylvain Francisco on the horizon. The Abu Dhabi Final Four is the minimum goal.
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In Barcelona, meanwhile, the atmosphere between Pascual and management had been tense for weeks. The Gavà coach accepted the role in November, when the club was going through a crisis after the dismissal of Joan Peñarroya, on the condition of receiving certain reinforcements. None arrived. Neither the center he requested from the start, nor the support he needed when injuries to Laprovittola, Satoransky, and Clyburn decimated the squad. The feeling of being ignored grew, and Dubai appeared at just the right moment.
Pascual thus closes a chapter marked by disappointment and opens another that promises to be the most ambitious of his career.
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