One of the most successful European coaches of the 21st century will continue guiding his current team for at least two more seasons as CSKA Moscow announced on Monday a new agreement with Dimitris Itoudis to keep working together until 2023.
CSKA, Itoudis together until 2023!
Itoudis, age 50, took over CSKA's bench in 2014 and has since led the club to a new golden age that includes not missing a single Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Final Four in seven seasons together. Their next one will begin in Cologne, Germany, starting on May 28.
Germany is also where Itoudis and CSKA won the first of their two EuroLeague trophies together by defeating Fenerbahce Istanbul after overtime in the 2016 championship game in Berlin. Three years later, in 2019, Itoudis and CSKA reached the mountaintop again by stopping Anadolu Efes Istanbul in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain.
His six consecutive Final Four appearances with CSKA are a new all-time record for coaches. If they succeed again in Cologne, Itoudis will become the first coach to lead CSKA, an eight-time continental champion, to three such titles.
Itoudis has a EuroLeague record with CSKA of 177-53 for a remarkable winning rate of 77.0%, the competition's best over the last seven years. He is the first Greek head coach and the 15th overall to win two continental crowns. In addition to his EuroLeague success, Itoudis has brought CSKA five VTB League titles in a row between 2015 and 2019 and is competing for a sixth this season.
Itoudis was awarded the Alexander Gomelskiy Trophy as the EuroLeague's coach of the year in 2016 and 2019. He is one of four coaches to win the award multiple times, along with Zeljko Obradovic, Pablo Laso and Ettore Messina. He also won the EuroLeague title five more times as the first assistant coach to the all-time leader, Obradovic, while they worked together at Panathinaikos Athens between 2000 and 2012. They also won 11 Greek League and seven Greek Cup trophies in that span.
In addition to having been a long-time assistant coach, Itoudis was previously a head coach for PAOK, Philippos Thessaloniki, and MENT in his native Greece in the 1990s, as well as coaching Banvit Bandirma of Turkey in the 2013-14 campaign.