Chairman of the CSR Board and Honorary President of the VTB United League Sergei Ivanov said in an interview with that without foreign players Russian basketball would lose quality and local players would lose a serious incentive to progress.
In June 2022, the VTB United League reduced the number of foreign players in the app from eight to six.
– Before the start of this season, CSKA was at a crossroads – choosing a strategy. Should you only bet on the Russians? Should we refuse the legionnaires? In the end, everything remained as before. Is this the club’s strategy during the period of international isolation?
– It’s strange to hear that, because I don’t have the slightest doubt: legionnaires are needed, and they will be. Without foreigners, we won’t have enough players for 12 Russian teams to maintain the current league level. An example from Lokomotiv-Kuban: Andrei Vedischev did a great job, the Krasnodar school works productively, a great club idea is implemented, but at the decisive moments of the series of semi-finals with CSKA, there are four African Americans and one Russian on the court.
You have to be objective: without legionnaires, the level will not only drop. The Russians, even the strongest, will find themselves without guidelines and without incentives for progress. Were Kirilenko and Shved ever bothered by the presence of strangers? Of course not. And they received playing time not according to their passport, but according to the case.
Another issue is that it has become more difficult to invite legionnaires. But they continue, even though they have become even more expensive. Top foreigners have already asked for a Russian supplement, because living and playing in Moscow is far from the same as living in Barcelona. Climate, traffic jams, visas, distances, crime – CSKA paid extra for all this,” Ivanov said in an interview with .
Live broadcasts of VTB United League matches are available on and other TV channels of the holding, as well as on the websites sportbox.ru and matchtv.ru.
Source : MatchTV
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