FCC Basketball UAV Arad and Miroslav Popov agreed and signed the contract for the 2024-2025 season. The Serbian technician took over the Arada bank last summer from his compatriot Bogdan Bulj, whom he had in his staff many years ago.
Popov led the “yellow-blue” to the silver medals this season, in which they managed to stop the dominance of Sepsi SIC Sfântu Gheorghe in the semi-finals, and in the final they lost to the other great favorite of the season, CSM CSU Constanța .
After a start to the season marked by the injury of Andreona Keys, who was supposed to be the team’s driving force, the team from Arada went to Constanța discovered and exited the first round of the Romanian Cup, after an unlucky draw. He then managed to complete his batch, at the level of possibilities, to grow from narrow victories to exhilarating ones with Sepsi and entered the final.
The record of the “yellow-blues” with Popov on the bench in the championship is 15 wins (11 in the regular season and 2 each in the quarters and semifinals) and 7 defeats (3 in the regular season, one in the semifinals and 3 in the final).
Club announcement:
“FCC UAV Arad will continue with Miroslav Popov on the bench, having signed with him also for the 2024-2025 season. The Serbian technician led our “yellow-blues” to silver in the National Women’s Basketball League in his first season with the team.
The experienced coach is happy that he will continue in Arad. Here’s what he said:
“We will be together again, because I felt positive emotions, good feed-back between me and the president, the club staff, with all the conditions in the club. I am satisfied on one side, probably the club is satisfied on the other side, so we will continue the cooperation. Hopefully we will make a new and better team for next season, we want to do the same as we did this year.
It depends on which team we will make. These are tough times, it depends if we have enough money, I don’t know what will happen, but we have to be smart, as we have been this season, to create a team with potential.
I am glad that we will work together again. I like the city, I like the fans in Arad, they are very important for our team. When you have such an audience it’s nice to play for them, you have motivation to play. And I, as a coach, have power and strength, we want to show our best when we play with this audience, more people come. Maybe there are many fans in Sfântu Gheorghe, but I think that in Arad there are more enthusiastic fans, they are noisy, it is a very good thing”.
The president of the club, Marcel Urban, wanted the continuity of the Serbian technician, after under his command the team became the vice-champion of Romania, overturning the predictions from the beginning of the season.
“He is the coach who did not lose the 1st place, but won the 2nd place. That is why we really wanted to continue with him. After how hard we started, with the bad luck of some injuries at the beginning of the season, to reach the final is still an achievement. I really appreciate the motivation of the players, who did not give up for a single moment and believed in their abilities throughout the entire championship, achieving several comebacks and beautiful victories. Here you can see the coach’s work style, for which some players came.
Together we lived beautiful moments, through some surprising victories, in which we believed. This was possible after the teamwork of everyone involved, from the players, technical staff, administrative staff, with the indispensable support of our sponsors, collaborators and supporters”.
