[Wednesday 0:30 a.m.]
But before going to Charleroi, I made a stop in Jambes to have a meeting with the Belgian U18 coach. The team managed to win the U18 B division at this summer’s European Championship so I was wondering what was behind this surprising result. I will come back to that later in a post on europeanprospects.com.
After the meeting, I drove to Charleroi where I had a lot of trouble to find a parking spot. And when I finally found the Press Parking area, time was running out in order to be at the Arena in time. Arrived there, I had no idea about how to connect to the Internet as there was no free Wifi connection available and the cable that I got from the Press officer did not help me a lot. Just connect it and it will work directly, he told me. Hmm, was not really the case. Luckily, a friendly Belgian journalist "offered" me a password he had on a list to connect to the Belgacom wifi network which is normally only available to subscribers.
The trouble continued as I had forgotten the name of our new Live Blogging tool, so I had to do the Live Blog with normal posts. I hope you could enjoy it, even it was really difficult to check it on a regular basis. During the game, I met Jonathan Givony from Draftexpress who was sitting just behind me and was working for his European scouting trip.
After the game, I tried to get some overpriced Pizza and managed to be late for the Press conference. Press conference is a nice word as there was nobody (maybe because I was late) except the Belgian coach who was explaining the loss of his team. He explained that he tried to build a fastbreak team but that they did not know when to play fast and when to play slow. He mentioned especially the Alley-oop play I was talking about in my live blog as one of the crucial moments as it would have been a nice play for the TV guys but it was not the moment to try something like that.
Outside the press room though, there is a nice VIP area with free open bar and a live orchestra. Unfortunately I could not taste the famous Belgian beer as I had to drive home directly. So I spoke a few words with Jonathan about the game and both of us had to leave.
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