“Players who now have offers from prosperous cities of Russia are unlikely to turn to Moscow” – Vatutin

President CSKA Andrey Vatutine spoke in an interview with about the selection difficulties encountered by the army this summer.

After last season, CSKA left the expensive Milutinov and Shved, on the payments to which, according to Vatutin, most of the club’s budget for 2023 was spent earlier than planned.

– Boost? The time to announce the names of the new arrivals has not yet come. For these reasons, they are mainly engaged in the reduction of the wage bill, we negotiate the reduction of existing contracts. It’s a delicate moment. All agreements are guaranteed, any downgrade is always at the player’s discretion. To our guys’ credit, most of them got into the club stance, bow to them for that.

In general, we have a completely new and not the most pleasant feeling that after 20 years players no longer line up at CSKA, and we have to ask for a “discount” for those who are. It is not easy to fall from the top, the forced restructuring is very cardinal for us and therefore painful. All Russian clubs have similar problems, but for more than two decades we lived in a completely different coordinate system. We must admit that we ourselves do not fully master the new realities, so the club’s management is looking for “working” solutions.

The coaches think we need eight Russians and six foreigners on a base basis. In the selection, we start from there, solving at the same time a huge problem of payments to foreign players. Payments abroad in euros and dollars are carried out by a few Russian banks, the money is constantly “frozen”. If earlier we had to overpay quality players for choosing Moscow over conditional Barcelona, ​​then even those who have offers from prosperous cities of Russia are unlikely to turn to Moscow, what kind of Catalonia is there. Who needs trouble when you can find a job in a better place? Does not add attractiveness to Russian clubs and the absence of Eurocups. This problem must also be offset by an exceptionally serious overpayment.

– Own youth in such a situation – a way out?

“We have much to celebrate here. A year ago, another junior team was added to the structure of the youth project. These are also expenses, but linked to a serious prospect. They released a lot of guys who were the doubles leaders at other clubs and deliberately lowered the age limits for all the teams. At the moment, it was playing against the “base”: against the background of injuries in the regular season, it was difficult for Rajkovic’s staff to find reinforcements in their own structure, since CSKA-2 was not among the leaders of the Superleague. But in the years to come, I’m sure we will have good players of our own. Our guys won the Children’s and Youth Basketball League, becoming the real champions of Russia U19, for us it’s a matter of pride, Vatutin told .

In May, the army team lost in the seventh game of the VTB United League semi-finals against Krasnodar Lokomotiv-Kuban (100:103) and did not reach the decisive stage of the confrontation. In the series for third place, CSKA defeated Zenit.