Today's Edition
KUUMAR SHYAM (ABU DHABI)
Dubai Basketball have roped in a big name by appointing the highly decorated Xavi Pascual as their new head coach on a three-year contract running through to 2029. The appointment comes after the club said goodbye to Slovenian coach Jurica Golemac who helped set up the team from scratch two years ago.
Pascual, the Catalan tactician, will try to build on the roots Golemac set up as the Dubai outfit won the regional ABA League title in its second year of operations and finished 11th out of Europe's top 20 teams in the elitist EuroLeague Basketball competition. They missed out on the extra season play-off games by a whisker; finishing inside the first half would have allowed them to do so.
Competing against the best teams in the world, the play-offs in the prestigious EuroLeague, which is co-sponsored by Experience Abu Dhabi, is something that Pascual will need to improve for making an impact.
Pascual, widely regarded as one of the finest defensive and tactical minds in modern European basketball, arrives in the UAE fresh from leading Barcelona to the Spanish Liga ACB Finals during the 2025/2026 season. His arrival signals the club's soaring ambitions, but the incoming coach will be under no illusions about the scale of the task ahead.
While the management has mobilised a passionate local fan base at the Coca-Cola Arena, Pascual must not only maintain the high standards and momentum established by Golemac but also elevate the squad now to become consistent contenders for silverware.
Fortunately, the Catalan native possesses the pedigree required. Over an illustrious career, he has coached 385 EuroLeague matches, boasting an extraordinary 66.5% winning rate – the third-highest in the competition's history for any coach with over a century of games under their belt.
Pascual first rose to global prominence during an eight-and-a-half-year spell with FC Barcelona between 2008 and 2016, where he famously lifted the EuroLeague trophy in Paris in 2010 and won four Spanish domestic league titles.
He later enjoyed highly successful stints abroad, claiming back-to-back Greek league championships with Panathinaikos Athens between 2016 and 2018, before masterminding Zenit Saint Petersburg's historic run to their first-ever EuroLeague Playoff appearance during his five-year tenure in Russia.
Pascual's trophy cabinet boasts seven domestic league titles across Spain, Greece, and Russia, alongside numerous domestic cups and individual Coach of the Year honours. It remains to be seen how the mastermind moulds the team in his own disciplined, detail-oriented image, to take Dubai Basketball to greater heights.
