Alessandro Tonolli

Alessandro Tonolli (C.E.1974 – living), basketball coach and former Italian basketball player.

Quotes by Alessandro Tonolli:

 * In the years, especially in recent years, we look much more at the contract and think in terms of money. I made a different choice but I don't criticize those who don't think like me.


 * It is the 94-95 season, I play in Brescia, president Giorgio Corbelli, I am a young man with good and good hopes who has recently won the B2 championship and dreams of Serie A. Avenia and Corbelli get hurt in Rome, he is also the president of Virtus, he decides to cover the hole by sending me to the capital. I arrive in November, without having done the preparation. A twenty year long story begins. Obviously not easy for a boy who had already moved from small Mantua to a big city like Brescia. I was lucky enough to live in a guesthouse with other kids from the youth sector who helped me get to know the city. Today, after 20 years, I can say that Rome is my city.
 * The comparison does not exist because Totti is a phenomenon, in terms of attendance and attachment to the team we have followed a bit the same path, except that he is Roman and I, on the other hand, am a Mantuan transplanted to Rome.
 * Without a doubt Bodiroga, an incredible champion who made monstrous plays with frightening naturalness.
 * It's not easy because the whole week and training sessions are based on the match. You train according to the match you will play. I train according to the match I won't play. Mentally it's not an easy job, but I try to give my contribution in another way, advising the younger one, explaining movements to the still immature American.


 * To create a player you need a valid instructor, behind a serious company with trained and valid managers. It's not easy [...]
 * Teodosic is a player who attracts attention not only from the fans but also from all those who perhaps do not come to watch the team play but the champion. Surely if I am passionate about sport I want to see a player like that, as if I were going to the theater to see a show.
 * Dejan was a great person and a great professional, he did every training session to the max when due to his status he could not have done so. He was the best not only on the pitch but also off it and this, having experienced the locker rooms a lot, is a characteristic that I have often recognized in great champions.
 * Rome is a city that is used to sport, where there are two football teams and in each category it has excellence. So the sports fan or lover in Rome has a lot of choice and this leads to dispersion. I am from Mantua, a city of 70,000 inhabitants where Serie A2 is held. It's logical that it's easier for a player to live in a small town than in a city like Rome where when you walk around you don't feel the city's attention on the team. I remember when we went to play in Avellino the arena was full, or in Roseto degli Abruzzi: these are cities where basketball is the only local sport and therefore is supported by the entire population. In Rome the problem was that the fans came to the stadium when there were important matches or when the hot phase of the playoffs began. And so we filled the stadium in the semi-finals and, the two times we did them, when we played the finals. But before we have always struggled, especially if we are talking about a city that has 3 million inhabitants. When you play a final and fill the PalaLottomatica with 13,000 people you say to yourself "where have they been until now?".
 * I played football, I was a full-back and a coach from Mantua went around the gyms looking for tall kids. I was in seventh grade and he asked me if I wanted to come and try, I liked sports anyway, I said "Okay, I'll go and try". I do a training session, the next day I go to the football team and tell them I'm quitting. It was love at first sight. Then I was lucky enough that this love became my job. From the moment I picked up the ball and made my first dribbles, a world opened up.
 * The kids I coach don't look at the best defender, they want to be like the one who scores 40 points a game. I'm trying to teach him to think more about the pitch and less about the scoreboard, because points aren't the only thing that matters. [...] To build a building they don't all have to be bricklayers, they don't all have to be architects, they don't all have to be surveyors. There must be the bricklayer, the architect and the surveyor: this is the function of the group.