The Israel National Team opens up the 2025 Eurobasket on Thursday at 3pm when they take on Iceland in Katowice. The squad arrived in yesterday and have already had a couple of practices both at the training facility and at the actual arena where the competition will take place.

Following Tuesday’s training session, national team newcomer Guy Palatin spoke about the challenges at hand and what he will be able to add to the squad.

“I always come into games aggressive and I will always do my job just as Ariel asks me to. As a team we will all come in strong and aggressive and everything will be fine.”

As for what the team will need to do against Iceland in order to keep them at bay, the second year Hapoel Tel Aviv player explained, “We will have to really concentrate on their guards who are creative and produce most of the offense there. Plus we will need to be the one who will dictate the pace simply of the game. The first game is always very important, because when you win that you feel good about your chances so that’s the focus.”

There will be over 1,000 Israeli fans that will be in Poland which will be huge for the team Palatin said, “It’s very exciting and even when there are just five people watching us and we hear ‘El El Israel’ it’s exciting. So with 1,000 fans here it will be absolutely amazing. We hope to that we can get the entire country behind us and excited as to how we are doing even though most will not be here with us, but we will do the best we can for everyone.”

Palatin spoke about what will be a successful tournament in his eyes, “To get as far as possible. To get through the group stage first and finish in a place that will allow us to continue on in the next stage of the tournament. Most important is that be stay together all of the time.”

This Eurobasket unlike the last one, there seems to be a lot of camaraderie amongst the players which is really crucial for the team to be successful Palatin said, “I wasn’t there, so I can’t really say anything about that but what I can say is that the team here is a completely different story. We are friends off of the court and we go out together, both abroad and in Israel. We are always together, we sing on the bus all the time and we are having the most fun in the world.”