With Pau Gasol leading the team once more, Spain will look in Poland for its first ever EuroBasket gold. The current World Champions and Olympic silver medalists have been on the European podium four times in the last five championships, but never on the top.

Pau Gasol

Pau Gasol is hungry of gold and success. After leading Spain to a memorable silver medal in the 2008 Olympic Games, he was expected to take a year off, to earn a well deserved rest... but he didn't. "I want to help my country in another international competition and to achieve one more success for our fans", he announced on July 3rd.

"I have to admit I was closer to a ‘no' than to a ‘yes'", he said a few days after, "But at the end of the season I was in pretty good condition and decided it was worth to give a shot to gold with the great team we have". Big decision and big commitment for a star who has played 104 games in a long and successful NBA season with the Los Angeles Lakers. Nevertheless, he has become the first ever Spanish player to win the title, with a main contribution in the Finals, averaging 18.6 points and 9.2rebounds per game, while stopping NBA superstar Dwight Howard in the lane.

He is the ultimate leader of the Spanish national team, which has spent most of this decade on the

Rudy Fernandez

podium: gold at the 2006 World Championship, silver at the 2008 Olympic Games, and EuroBaskets 1999, 2003 and 2007 and bronze at EuroBasket 2001. Remember this: Spain has reached the EuroBasket Semi-Finals in the last five championships and has only missed the podium in 2005, when ranked 4th and only a basket shy of the final game.

But now, it is all about gold. Spain is the current World Champion and also the best team in the Olympics, USA team aside, but has NEVER won the European competition. It has been eight times in the podium, but has always fallen short in the gold hunt. Probably the toughest loss is the most recent one on September 16th 2007, Madrid when JR Holden's jumper with 2.8 seconds left sealed gold for the Russians and extended Spain's European curse.

Now, again, Spain is the main candidate for the gold. Pau Gasol is up to the challenge and most stars have followed his path, so the reds will arrive to Poland with an astonishing lineup. Next to the Lakers genius will be fellow NBA players Rudy Fernandez and Marc Gasol, Euroleague superstars Juan Carlos Navarro, Felipe Reyes and Jorge

Ricky Rubio

Garbajosa and the new prodigy, Ricky Rubio, aged 18 but expected to start after a promising debut at the Olympics. Carlos Cabezas, Alex Mumbru, Berni Rodriguez, Raul Lopez and Victor Claver, all proven good in club and National team competitions, join them in a very deep and talented roster.

But Spain will have to overcome two key absences: Jose Manuel Calderon and Carlos Jimenez, both starters in the last championships, will rest this summer. Calderon, a world class playmaker who shines in the NBA with the Toronto Raptors, will sit down because of several injuries, while veteran forward Carlos Jimenez announced his retirement from the national team the same day Spain went up to the Olympic podium at Beijing. It was his 11th straight summer playing for his country and also his sixth medal, an all-time record for Spain.

Those won't be the only important changes for the team, with a new head coach, Sergio Scariolo. The Italian, currently at Khimki Moscow (Russia) replaces Aito Garcia Reneses and becomes the third coach in Spanish bench in last three years, after Pepu Hernandez commanded it at EuroBasket 2007. Scariolo has a deep knowledge of Spanish Basketball, where he has coached and lived for 11 years, playing with or against all his current pupils in the national team, but his ties to Spain are even bigger than the game. The father of two children born in the country, he is married to Blanca Ares, a former basketball legend who was part of the one and only Spanish national team to win gold in a senior European Championship: EuroBasket Women 1993 in Perugia, Italy.

"We start over. The game level in the last years has been high and we will try to make it even better, but first of all we have to rebuild the team chemistry and make everything work fine. When you prepare a new competition, you have to start over with new targets", Scariolo said before preparation started.