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Katsikaris named national basketball coach

With a huge experience as head coach of European clubs, Fotis Katsikaris is the new national team coach, who will lead it to the basketball World Cup in Spain this September.

The beginning of the long-awaited era of Fotis Katsikaris at the helm of the Greek national team was confirmed officially. Katsikaris is to mastermind Greece's campaign at the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2014 in Spain, joining Panagiotis Giannakis and Ilias Zouros as the only three still active Greek coaches to have assumed charge of their national team.

"The honor that this collaboration constitutes for me is self-evident, but it is also a great challenge," Katsikaris said in a statement issued by the Greek Basketball Federation (EOK). "I am grateful for the trust invested in me and would like to promise that I will work to the best of my abilities in order to achieve the targets we have set. We are all aware of both the quality of the players as well as of the great expectations that the Greek public has", he added.

Katsikaris is not expected, at this point at least, to combine his position at the helm of the two-time EuroBasket champions with a job at a club, as he had chosen to take a sabbatical year after parting ways with Bilbao Basket last summer, following a three-season long tenure at the Spanish club.

The 47-year-old coach had steered Bilbao into the ACB League finals in 2011 and the Eurocup final in 2013 (lost to Lokomotiv Kuban), the same season that he was named Coach of the Year in the competition.

A former point guard for AEK Athens, Katsikaris started off his coaching career at the same club and then also worked at Dynamo Saint Petersbourg, Valencia Basket and Aris Salonika before arriving in Bilbao in 2010.

EOK had long been convinced that he was the right man for the job, but the announcement could not have been produced earlier, due to contractual and legal technicalities that also involve his predecessor on the Greek bench.

Katsikaris is succeeding in the role Andrea Trinchieri, who is currently the head coach of Russian club Unics Kazan.