Translated material
Unnatural selection
Russian clubs are doomed to play each other in the Euroleague
At the quarterfinal stage of the FIBA Women's Euroleague, Russian clubs had to play each other. In the first match on Tuesday, the strongest team on the continent based on the results of last season, Spartak near Moscow, without much tension on its site in the Sports Palace in the city of Vidnoye, dealt with the capital's Dynamo - 96:67. The second meeting of the day was a repeat of the October World League final. CSKA at home, lost to UMMC (Ekaterinburg) - 74:81 . The series is played until two wins, the next matches will take place February 29 at the "White-Blue" and "Uralochka" venues.If “Spartak” and “Dynamo” were forced to meet each other based on the results of the ranking based on the results of the preliminary stage, then CSKA and UMMC were brought into one pair artificially, but in accordance with the regulations of FIBA-Europe, under whose auspices the tournament is held. The purpose of this approach is to limit the number of teams from one country at the decisive stage, that is, the Final Four. A similar policy is pursued, for example, by the European Volleyball Confederation, which also does not want to turn the main matches of its tournaments into internal squabbles. However, some of our women's basketball leaders do not seem to be familiar with what is happening in other team sports. Otherwise, how can we explain the appeal submitted to FIBA-Europe by UMMC with a request to redraw the Euroleague grid.
The Ural club was rejected by both the FIBA legal commission and the highest arbitration court of this organization. A delegate from Spartak near Moscow at the recent reporting and re-election conference of the RFB also spoke about the alleged arbitrariness of the continental branch of the International Basketball Federation. Moreover, he cited the example of women's tennis, where there really are no limits on the representation of girls from one country in the main draw of tournaments. Alas, here the respected specialist was let down by his shallow knowledge of the subject. The most significant competitions of big racket masters are held by professional tennis associations (ATP for men and BTA for women), in which players essentially represent themselves, and not their national federations. The name of the country indicated here in the protocols of fights after the athlete’s name is only a pure convention.
By the way, with a limit of three places per country, through the efforts of RFB President Sergei Chernov, who has great authority in FIBA, our country was allocated an additional fourth place in the Euroleague. But this was not enough for the participating clubs from Russia.
Of course, CSKA, UMMC and Spartak, which have impressive budgets, today have the opportunity to recruit the best players on the planet - basketball players from the Russian national team, Americans, and the strongest players from Europe. Perhaps, today only the Spanish “Ros Casares” is able to compete with this “big three”, where, again, the tone is set by the students of domestic basketball - the 1992 Barcelona Olympic champion Elena Tornikida and the mother of two children Elena Baranova, who constantly makes double-doubles, that is posting double-digit scoring and rebounding numbers. For some reason, the leaders of Russian clubs do not want to understand that when one country openly dominates in any sport, collecting all the prizes and trophies one after another, then this sport is doomed to oblivion on an international scale.
Our national championship has become completely uninteresting lately. After the metropolitan “Dynamo” fell out of the elite, having lost three players of the Russian national team in the off-season (Oksana Rakhmatullina, Natalya Vodopyanova and Tatyana Shchegoleva), only a few get-togethers between UMMC, CSKA and Spartak seem intriguing. In the playoffs, a fight is expected in one of the semi-finals between some of these clubs, and, of course, the final. Not enough for a tournament that lasts from October to May, that is, seven months. The leading Russian clubs will be able to realize their desire to clarify the relationship with each other not somewhere on the approaches to the decisive stage, but directly in the final round of a serious tournament in the Russian Cup tournament on March 23-25. For the first time, the main stage of the tournament will be held in the Final Eight format. Venue: Yekaterinburg. The Russian Basketball Federation on Monday named a couple of meeting teams: Dynamo M - Shelen (Krasnoyarsk), UMMC - Vologda-Chevakata, Spartak - Dynamo (Kursk), CSKA - BC Moscow ", in each of the quarterfinal pairs the outcome is easily predictable. The clear favorites are the clubs listed first.
An interesting idea was expressed in a conversation with a Vremya Novostei correspondent by the chairman of the RFB coaching council for women's basketball, honored mentor of the country, Professor Valery Lunichkin. He pointed out the path that mid-level teams with limited resources could take in order to reduce the overall gap in skill from the three giants. “At one time, Cuban legionnaires already performed in clubs near Moscow, and they proved themselves to be very good. Then, due to a change in sports leadership on Liberty Island, the players were prohibited from leaving for foreign countries, but now, after the well-known events in Cuba, they can again receive permission to defend the colors of European teams,” Lunichkin noted. -- In terms of price-quality ratio, Cubans are almost ideal material; they are unpretentious off the court and hardworking in training. It is worth paying attention to the Korean player market. I personally know several girls who are willing to perform in Russia for a reasonable fee.”