The gloom that accompanies the nights drawing in at this time of year is balanced out for us European basketball fans by the new season coming to life.
EuroLeague, the premier club competition on the continent, gets going this coming week with two round of games from Tuesday to Friday. It has expanded to 20 teams for the 2025-26 edition and there are plenty of teams that you could make a reasonable case for when predicting who may be competing in the Final Four next May.
Round 1 fixtures
Tuesday 30 September
FC Barcelona at Hapoel IBI Tel Aviv
Partizan Mozzart Bet Belgrade at Dubai Basketball
Maccabi Rapyd Tel Aviv at Anadolu Efes Istanbul
EA7 Emporio Armani Milan at Crvena Zvezda Meridianbet Belgrade
FC Bayern Munich at Panathinaikos AKTOR Athens
Olympiacos Piraeus at Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz
Real Madrid at Virtus Bologna
Wednesday 1 October
Zalgiris Kaunas at AS Monaco
Paris Basketball at Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul
Valencia Basket at LDLC ASVEL Villeurbanne
Dubai Debut
Dubai Basketball’s rapid rise to the EuroLeague sees the team taking on Europe’s elite in just their second full professional season.
They will begin their EuroLeague story at home against a team that has already become a familiar foe: Partizan Belgrade.
Dubai’s domestic competition is the ABA League that brings together teams from nine different countries. They finished third in the ABA league standings with a 25-5 record, one place behind Partizan. The two teams met in the play-off semi-finals and Partizan ended the Dubai debut season fairytale with a 2-1 series victory before Belgrade’s finest defeated Budućnost 3-1 to win the ABA crown for the second time in three seasons.
Both teams have made a late addition to their roster in recent days, bringing in players at the opposite end of their careers.
Dubai announced on Sunday the signing of experienced 34-year-old centre Sertac Sanli. The Turk was part of Fenerbahce’s title winning team last season and will bring plenty of European nous to his new team. The signing was partly made necessary due to centre Mam Jaiteh suffering a dreaded achilles tendon injury in pre-season. The former Monaco man is likely to miss the entire 2025-26 for his new club.
As for Partizan, they have made a late move for 18-year-old Finnish forward Miika Muurinen. He dazzled at the recent EuroBasket, where he was the youngest player in the tournament. Muurinen has decided to build on that momentum by leaving his American High School after two years and playing a season of professional basketball back in Europe before a probable stint in the NCAA.
Other Stories
Elsewhere on Tuesday, Bayern Munich are looking to put a disappointing 24-25 season behind them and they will begin that effort by taking on one of the toughest challenges in European basketball: trying to defeat Panathinaikos at the Telekom Center in Athens. Munich lost both games against Panathinaikos in the EuroLeague last season.
On Wednesday, the reigning EuroLeague champions Fenerbahce will host Paris having already picked up some silverware in the new season. Fenerbahce edged past Besiktas on Thursday by a score of 85-83 to win the Turkish President’s Cup. Head Coach Sarunas Jasikevicius will be slightly concerned that the game finished so close after his team held a monstrous 40-16 lead early in the second quarter.
It was an early reminder that even a superbly deep team like Fenerbahce cannot afford to take a victory for granted in European basketball.
From Deep UK 
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