Alvertis gets the ax ahead of Eurobasket
National team captain Fragiskos Alvertis, one of the team’s longest-serving members and a key player at Panathinaikos, Europe’s most successful club in recent years, has been dropped from the Greek squad for the upcoming Eurobasket tournament in Serbia and Montenegro. Greece coach Panayiotis Yiannakis passed over the player in response to his request for some time off as well as his late arrival for the squad’s preparations for the September competition. The 33-year-old player has represented Greece in four Eurobasket competitions, starting in 1995, along with a World Cup and two Olympic Games. Yiannakis recently also dropped two of the team’s other older squad members, Efthymis Rentzias and Giorgos Sigalas. Michalis Kakiouzis of Barcelona, aged 29, is now the squad’s oldest player, followed by Panathinaikos’s Dimitris Papanikolaou, 28, who is being widely tipped to take over the captain’s role from Alvertis.
