VALENCIA (Jeff Taylor's Eurovision) - This won't surprise anyone that happened to be in Turin last summer, when Italy hosted a six-team FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament (OQT).

The masses are crying out to see their national team again. Remember the OQT?

Nothing gets the Italians going like their national team 

The passionate support always surfaces in a crowd when the players wear the name of their country on the jersey.

The atmosphere at each and every game at the OQT was electric. Italy, coached by their great Ettore Messina, beat Tunisia in their first game. Do you think the fans were into that one?

They next took on Croatia, a team that despite the absence of numerous veterans looked very good. Italy scraped a narrow win and yes, the fans were rocking and rolling in this one, too.

Mexico were the third hurdle to clear for the Italians, a team trying to make it back to the Olympics for the first time since 2004 when it went on a stunning run to the Final. Mexico battled, but Italy prevailed. The atmosphere was charged. Again!

Italy next traded blows with Croatia, who had surprised Greece in the other Semi-Final, and the teams played a real thriller. The fans were boisterous. They lived and died on every possession and in the end, after overtime, Croatia won. They went to the Olympics while the Azzurri stayed home.

There was shock and disbelief for Italy, but the result did not kill the love and desire for the country's fans to see their national team. There remains plenty of hunger.

If they wait just a little bit longer, they'll have their team, the most popular team, back in the country. Big changes have arrived with FIBA's New Competition System.

So here's what's going to happen. Instead of Italian fans switching off their passion for the national team after FIBA EuroBasket 2017 until the summer of 2018, they'll instead start getting fired up about a couple of important World Cup Qualifiers in November - the first of six windows when national teams will play games in a bid to reach the 32-team basketball extravaganza in China.

The Azzurri will host Romania on 23 November and then a few days later play at Croatia, the team that prevented Italy from playing in Rio de Janeiro.

Then in the second window, Italy will host one of the eight teams that make it out of the Pre-Qualifiers on 23 February before playing three days later at Romania. In the third window will be what could prove to be a pivotal home game again against Croatia on 28 June (I hope it's in Turin) before a 1 July game at the side from the Pre-Qualifiers.

This week, Sky Italia hosted a Basketball Summit on TV.  It turned into eye-opening discussion and confirmed, once again, how popular basketball is in the country, especially its national team.

Comments made by Paolo Bellino, the general manager of RCS Sport - a sport and a media company that operates mainly in Italy in the sports sector, as part of RCS MediaGroup - were the most telling.

He talked about what happened last summer in Turin.

"Last year, we organized the pre-Olympic tournament in Turin and beyond the sporting achievement that did not reward us, the public response and interest in the Azzurri was incredible," Bellino said.

"(We believed) It would be interesting to spread the visibility of our players for 12 months, and in this sense the winter window (s) provided by FIBA will meet our needs."

There will be five more windows after the November one, concluding in February 2019.

Get ready.

Jeff Taylor
FIBA

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