Translated material
Pipes aside
There will be less noise at CSKA matches in the ULEB Euroleague
Today, with a home match against the Italian club Montepaschi (Siena), CSKA basketball players will start in the sixth edition of the ULEB Euroleague - a tournament of the strongest teams of the Old World. At the preliminary stage, the army team plays in Group “C” and their opponents will also be “Panathinaikos” (Greece), Spanish “Unicaja” and “Real”, “Pau-Ortez” (France), “Ulker” (Turkey) and “Partizan” (Serbia and Montenegro). The task for Ettore Messina's team at this stage is not difficult - the best five teams from each of the three eights, as well as one club that took sixth place with the best results, advance to the second group stage of the Top 16.Fans who have not yet attended a Russian championship match this season will be treated to something new. Now fans of the team are prohibited from using pipes in any form. This simple musical instrument is recognized by the administration as an item that can be thrown onto the court during a game. Alas, similar precedents took place at matches involving the Russian national team, and in order to avoid new cases, spectators were asked to do without pipes. Ticket prices are steep - you can sit in the gallery alone for 150 rubles, side seats and the opportunity to watch the match from the top tier will cost a fan 500-750 rubles, and to get into the central sector you have to pay 1000-1500 rubles .
CSKA is the oldest Russian participant in European cups. The red-blues played their first match in the European Cup 45 years ago, defeating the Stars (Charleville) away in France with a score of 68:28. The army team won the main continental trophy four times during the Soviet period (1961, 1963, 1969, 1971), and after the collapse of the USSR, our flagship performs in European competitions with enviable stability, but cannot replenish the collection of prizes - competition in the Old World has become much fiercer than in the old days. Over the past ten seasons, CSKA reached the Final Four five times - the European Cup (1996), the Suproleague (2001) and the ULEB Euroleague (2003-2005), but constantly lost to its opponents on the first day of the tournament and, as a loser in the semi-finals, lost hope for ultimate success.
The strategic plan for the development of the club, announced by the general director of PBC CSKA Sergei Kushchenko in August 2002 immediately after Serbian Dusan Ivkovic took over as head coach, implied a gradual ascent to the continental top and the triumph of the capital’s basketball players in the 2005 season. The club's leaders did everything possible to ensure that the Union of European Basketball Leagues (ULEB) gave the right to host the Final Four to Moscow. The players unexpectedly, within the walls of the Olimpiysky sports complex, forgot their best qualities and failed the home tournament, losing in both meetings. The contract with Ivkovic ended, and a new era in the development of CSKA was proclaimed - a bet on young, promising home-grown players.
There are three of them in the team's application for the season - defender Vasily Zavoruev, forward Nikita Shabalkin and 215-centimeter center Anatoly Kashirov. Moreover, in Super League matches Shabalkin has already been in the starting lineup three times, Zavoruev also received a sufficient amount of playing time, spending an average of 14 minutes on the court. And only Kashirov came on as substitutes sporadically. True, in the Euroleague the restriction on foreign players is more lenient than in the Russian Championship - at least all five foreigners can be on the court, as long as there are no more than two representatives from other continents. Therefore, in tournaments under the auspices of ULEB, the coach should not rack his brains about how to find time for a Russian player; here everything depends on his goodwill. How much Messina trusts the army youth can be understood precisely from the European Cup games.
It is not yet entirely clear who in CSKA will take on the role of a full-time sniper in critical situations, when a few accurate long-range shots can dramatically change the course of the match. This scorer last season was the American Marcus Brown, whom Muscovites will now see in the ranks of Unicaja. Probably, the role of lifesaver will be assigned to Trajan Langdon, although last season his skill was not even enough to help the capital’s Dynamo overcome the first round of the ULEB Cup playoffs in competition with the Serbian Gemofarm. If we consider the aspect of playing under the shields, then the presence of centers David Andersen and Alexey Savrasenko in the lineup allows us to be calm about the fight on the second floor. And the army’s powerful forwards are good at rebounding.
The first match in our group was played on Monday. Ulker, with Mirsad Turkan, well known to Muscovites, in the presence of 12 thousand spectators in Istanbul lost 66:82 to Panathinaikos, for which former army player Nikos Hatzivretas plays.