A fly on the wall in the “Pesic Dome” of Bayern Munich

November 8, 2015
Pascal

Recently, I got the opportunity to have a look behind the scenes with Bayern Munich and Coach Svetislav Pesic. I got to know Coach Pesic personally as the mentor of FIBA’s FECC program, which played a crucial role in my coaching career. Coach Pesic is probably Europe’s most legendary basketball coach, being a former world champion, European champion (2x) and Euroleague winner as a coach. This documentary is certainly must-see material for every basketball coach.

I absolutely think such a short internship is of an incredible value to young coach. Not because of some secret plays that are ran by a winning team. I don’t believe basketball is a game of secrets. On top, the X’s and O’s of a team at the highest level are far from the only things that makes it worthwhile. During those kind of practices, one pays attention to:
– How is the coach preparing his team for the next game?
– How is his personal relation with the players?
– How does the staff function and who has which responsability?
– How intense/long are the practices the day before the game and on gameday itself?
– What’s the schedule on gamedays?
– …

It is difficult to describe the value of these days at Munich for me as a young and ambitious coach. Not only the experience and the knowledge, but also the boost of energy and inspiration makes this 8h driving trip from Belgium worthwhile!

I want to thank Coach Pesic and the Bayern Munich organisation explicitly for allowing me to be a fly-on-the-wall for a couple of days.

Coach Svetislav Pesic and me

On Friday night, I attended the Euroleague game against SIG Strassbourg (with French national team coach Vincent Collet) and on Sunday Bayern played against BG Göttingen in the national league. Göttingen is coached by Johan Roijakkers, which I know since a very long time when we played for the same club in Belgium, Bree BBC. Both games were won by Munich and the atmosphere in a sold-out Audi-dome by 6500 people was great! To me personally, Germany confirmed its reputation as a sports-minded country with an impressive organisation!