For Moscow CSKA the next season of the VTB United League will not be easy due to the departure of the leaders, this opinion was expressed by the CEO of the league in a conversation with Ilona Korstin .
The new United League season begins on September 30 with a match between Kazan UNICS and the club Lokomotiv-Kuban from Krasnodar.
At the end of last season, UNICS became champions, Lokomotiv won silver, and multiple champions CSKA took bronze.
— We start the regular season with a match between last season’s finalists, the champion and the silver medalist – UNICS and Lokomotiv-Kuban, respectively. Now it all starts again. I think every basketball fan will be interested to see what the participants of the last final look like in a head-to-head match and remember this confrontation. The next match promises to be interesting. I think UNICS and Lokomotiv will fight for the highest places. The teams conducted pre-season training and played numerous friendly matches. All participants are now different. Lokomotiv held the United League Super Cup very well: they reached the final and showed excellent basketball. UNICS is not yet in optimal shape. But I think that the Kazan team will be able to draw conclusions after an unsuccessful performance in the Super Cup (UNICS finished 7th in the tournament – editor’s note). However, there is little time left and conclusions must be drawn very quickly.
CSKA and Zenit, who were playing for third place last season? Last Sunday, the St. Petersburg team became the champion of the Super Cup, and a week earlier they won the Kondrashin and Belov Cup. Zenit looks powerful, the team is well equipped. This is a serious team with serious players who can decide the outcome of the match and take the initiative at the most crucial moment. I think that with such a team, Zenit already claims to become one of the strongest teams in the League this season. But on the other hand, it is not the budgets and the composition of the team on paper that play a role: the basketball players play. And they must prove in practice that they are stronger. Each match starts with a score of 0:0 and no one gives victory in advance. We have to fight for this. And the season is going to be long.
As for CSKA, the situation before the start of the championship is not easy for them, but the season has only just begun. We are used to seeing the Muscovites first. “But now the team has changed a lot: two leaders, Alexei Chved and Nikola Milutinov, left during the offseason; there are a lot of young basketball players in the squad,” Korstin told .
Watch the live broadcast of the UNICS – Lokomotiv-Kuban match on Saturday, September 30 on the channel from 1:55 p.m. (Moscow time), as well as on the websites matchtv.ru and sportbox.ru.
Source : MatchTV
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