Jean-Baptiste Sarrazin / Photo credit: Valery HACHE / AFP 18:11 p.m., May 18, 2023

Who will be European basketball champion? The Euroleague Final Four takes place this weekend, from Friday, May 19 to Sunday, May 21, in Kaunas, Lithuania. For the first time since 1997, a representative of the French championship, AS Monaco, will try to win the European title. Dates, times, TV broadcast, here is the useful information not to miss anything of the event.

A little rock in the shoe of the powerful. Twenty-six years after Villeurbanne and for the first time in its history, Monaco participates in the Final Four of the Euroleague basketball in the middle of the cadors of the continent (Real Madrid, Barcelona and Olympiacos), starting Friday in Kaunas, Lithuania. Having succeeded, for only its second participation, in bringing French basketball back into the last four of the queen of European competitions, not attended since Asvel in 1997, is already a notable achievement for ASM.

To succeed CSP Limoges, the only French club to win the C1 (in 1993), it must achieve two others, it was still playing in the third division in the summer of 2013 when Olympiacos, its opponent Friday in the semifinals, won its third title in Euroleague. First half of the Final Four, Monegasques and Greeks will face each other from 17 pm. The other semi-final, between Barcelona and Real Madrid, will also take place on Friday, starting at 20 p.m. The final and third-place match will take place on Sunday at 16 p.m. and 19 p.m.

Friday 19 May: semi-finals
17 p.m.: Olympiakos/Monaco (La Chaîne L'Equipe and Skweek)20 p.m.: Barcelona/Real Madrid (Skweek)

Sunday, May 21: Third place match and final 16 p.m.: 3rd place match (Skweek)19 p.m.: final
(La Chaîne L'Equipe and Skweek)

Monaco's revival

Taken over in 2012 by Ukrainian businessman Sergey Dyadechko, who since 2022 has ceded his place as president and majority shareholder to the Russian naturalized Hungarian Aleksej Fedoricsev, the club of the Rock has climbed the ladder at high speed. Until winning, in 2021, the Eurocup, antechamber of the Euroleague, a coronation that opened the doors of the C1, semi-closed competition where two-thirds of clubs have their permanent napkin ring.

Among them, Real Madrid (10 titles), Barcelona (2) and Olympiacos, on whom Monaco had broken their teeth last year during the decisive support match of the quarter-finals, reached in its first appearance in C1. "We're going to fight for something even bigger. We must realize our luck and live fully in the moment," said Yakuba Ouattara. "We have nothing to envy to anyone, we are able to beat everyone," he then warned.