Luca Banchi spoke in an interview for the Serie A YouTube channel about numerous interesting situations during his coaching career.
What’s intriguing is that the role of the host was given to the current coach of Zalgiris, Andrea Trinchieri.
The first anecdote Luca Banchi shared relates to his first encounter with Kristaps Porzingis in the Latvian national team.
“I never dreamed of becoming the coach of a national team, especially one that wasn’t mine. That’s how we come to Latvia. The first time I met Kristaps Porzingis, I was already working with the national team. We met on the street, I approached him, but he didn’t recognize me,” Banchi said, then added:
“He thought I was a fan who had come for an autograph. I told him I was Luca Banchi, the coach of Latvia, and that’s how the whole story began. They accepted foreign coaches differently because they had been disappointed many times before. They are small countries with big hearts, your performances emotionally affect people.”