Translated material
Citizenship in Blatt
The coach of the Russian basketball team is trying to get a team of an American player
Citizen Perkins. Starting on September 7, the Russian basketball team will have to defend the title of European champion in Poland. That's just the author of the “golden” throw of the two-year ago John-Robert Holden will not be in its composition. How they looked for him a replacement - the New Times found out 
But Holden (1) with his "golden" throws in its composition will not be
Holden, after the adoption of Russian citizenship at the end of 2003, honestly played the official matches for our team, this summer decided to take a break - and warned about it in advance. The team was left without the main playing. Since the players of this class over the past six years, alas, have not appeared, the Blatt coach had an idea to replace Holden with Doron Perkins, well acquainted with Blatt for the period when he still worked in Israel with McCabi from Tel Aviv, and Perkins played for McCabi from Haifa. True, the coach remembered the player late-somewhere a month before the beginning of Euro 2009. And Holden, by the way, was drawn up for almost six months, if we count from the day when he wrote a letter in the name of the President of Russia, in which he stated that he wanted to play for our team. In addition, John-Robert was already one of CSKA leaders and his appearance in the national team promised a hundred percent strengthening of the team, while no one (except Blatt himself) from our basketball specialists did not really see in the matter, and if he saw, he did not remember: the class of an American who settled in Israel somehow did not catch his eye. And go to the very top to ask for unknown for whom ...
The Russians are involuntarily
The chances of accelerating the process would have grown great if Blatt, having worked last season in Dynamo, would have called Perkins to the club. Then the starting point would have appeared. After all, Holden was “fenced” in CSKA to withdraw a valuable player from under the limit to legionnaires. This is later, a few months later, it reached the national team. And so the chain was as follows: the President of CSKA, the great and legendary Alexander Gomelsky, went with a letter to Holden to the president of the basketball federation Sergey Chernov, and together they have already connected to the procedure of the mayor of Luzhkov and the sports minister Fetisov. Since the club was based in Moscow, Luzhkov was needed as the head of the subject of the Russian Federation, and Fetisov as the head of the federal authority. And already they, convinced by Gomel and Chernov, petitioned immediately before the president of the country.
True, when Holden was congratulated on gaining the second homeland, he somehow did not show special happiness, saying that it was necessary to the club primarily, and not to him, and that in Greece, where he played before CSKA, he also spoke about his second citizenship, but his contract was short, and he signed up with CSKA for a long time, so he agreed to become a Russian. Moreover, he was not considered a candidate for the US national team even in a long term.
The experience of naturalizing a foreigner for the national team for a particular tournament in our sports was also, and not to say a successful one. To the qualifying cycle of the European Football Championship, 20000 was issued by the Russian Cameroon Defender Tchuys, who played at that time for Spartak. Moreover, then it was possible to say with the full basis that as a football player Camerines took place precisely in Russia: from his native Africa, Zherri-Christian Tchuys departed shortly after graduation, deciding to continue his education with us, and for several years he drove the ball in the student championship of the Krasnodar Territory, until he was noticed and invited to Novorossiysk to a professional team, from there he reached Spartak. And he almost reached the national team (Tchuys’s citizenship was issued faster than Holden), but then they first remembered him in Cameroon ... And the “Call of the Ancestors” turned out to be stronger. And the Coach of Spartak and the Romantsev national team after such a “treason is on the contrary” cooled noticeably to Tchuys, and indeed they did not ask for such a level anymore.
Entrance fee
And David Blatt has so far only managed to obtain the consent of the “first instance” - the same eternal President of the RFB Sergey Chernov. But Perkins by that time was not in Russia either a day or to the territory of Luzhkov, nor to anyone else, therefore, he did not go. They threw fishing rods to the Minister Vitaly Mutko, but ran into a tough rebuke: “We need to do it, not the naturalization of foreigners” - this was his answer. Moreover, with a threat, it is addicted to take the basketball development program, which the Federation should soon submit to the ministerial accreditation of summer sports. True, Vitaly Mutko also recalled a positive example of providing citizenship when the Japanese skater Kawaguti wrote in a letter to the Russian coach Moskvin that there is only one person in the world, under whose leadership Kavaguti could achieve outstanding results. She believed her Muscovin, she had no less authority than that of Gomel, and now the couple of Kawaguti -Smirnov won a lot of medals for Russia at the largest tournaments, and to ride them even until Sochi. And if anyone in the Ministry of Sports and is ready to meet, then, according to the minister, "these are the guys." Doron Perkins so far, apparently, got into the "bad guys." But it is not he who was to blame: the person himself did not know in the middle of the summer he did not know that he dreamed, it turns out, from the beginning of autumn to play for the Russian national team. This David Blatt had to take care that Perkins to start writing a letter. At least to him, Blatt, like Kavaguti by Muscovite: they say, only with you we will be able to climb to the top and drag the rest on it. In Israel, someone would have found someone for Doron to roll such a message in Russian, and he would only sign it. And so the time turned out to be lost.
However, an American with a Russian passport in the Blatt team, most likely, will turn out to be: the Khimki club naturalized Kelly McCarthy a year ago. True, he will be a class lower than Holden, and besides, he doesn’t play in the role of the role, and the forward, and in this position there are enough indigenous Russians for the national team. But it would be necessary to take it to Poland, otherwise they may not give any citizenship to anyone. We'll have to focus on growing your own talents - and this, you know, is a troublesome business ...