By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
EuroLeague is making steps toward injury prevention, a need which is even more urgent after the expansion to 20 teams.
As the EuroLeague Head Coaches Board executive director said, this is a must and a working group on the subject has been already created.
In an interview given to Serbian outlet “Danas” which covered everything from NBA Europe, to the situation with the Serbian teams and the coaching changes, Sasic also revealed that EuroLeague is also concerned about injuries.
As he said: “Before I left the Euroleague, where I worked for nine years, I fought for the Euroleague to hire a professional doctor who will monitor all parameters from the league’s perspective. After many meetings that we as the EHCB had together with the Union of Players, the Union of Referees and the Union of Fitness Coaches, this month we had a joint meeting with the head doctor of the Euroleague and with the management of the Euroleague for the first time. I kept insisting on getting a professional-scientific explanation of why something is happening. So after the explosion of these injuries I said “now I insist that it be done”.
Sasic presented even more details about this issue: “The working group consists of experts – Euroleague doctor Nacho Muro, Professor Jukic from ELPA, Professor Jakovljevic from the EHCB, and Kostas Chatzichristos who is the president of the Euroleague Strength & Conditioning Coaches Association. The referees will also send their representative because this is not only about the health of the players, but also about the health of the referees and the health of the coaches and all the participants. I said that the working group should first come to some conclusions, and then present it to the working group of Euroleague club gemeral managers and then present it to the Euroleague Board. This is a multidimensional problem”.
Simply put, the current calendar as Sasic explains, needs this kind of prevention: “The competition calendar does not depend only on the Euroleague. We have national leagues of 20 teams and those of 10 clubs. Then you have players who don’t play in the national team, then players who play for national teams. Shortened preparations follow, we also have to talk about whether it was necessary to shorten them so much. The question is whether all clubs have adequate medical equipment. If you expect a Formula 1 driver, which in my metaphor are Euroleague players, he should drive a modern car, not give him an old Zastava. So, is that medical equipment at an enviable level or not? Are the experts working in the clubs really trained enough for the rehabilitation process? It is a very deep topic. I don’t feel competent to talk about it. That is why I asked for the formation of an expert commission. I want them to give us an answer”.
Currently the EuroLeague teams and players simply don’t have enough time for preparation: “Preparations literally do not exist anymore. Another thing that adds to the calendar is injuries. When I get ready to watch the Euroleague games, I first read the injury lists. And that is very unfortunate. On that side, we should all work together on how to protect the players and minimize the number of injuries that exploded this year. It is a deeper analysis and a topic that everyone must work on”.
That’s why, specially in case of an expansion to more than 20 teams, a new format might be a must: “I always say that we, like basketball, should follow football, since the players of the English Premier League have already said that they play too many games, then it is easier for all other sports to adapt to that attitude. It is too much for our players to play 90 to 100 games a year for clubs. The big problem is that we have national leagues that really think they should have 20, 18 or 16 clubs. It’s totally insane and makes no sense at all. I remember the situation when Bogdan Bogdanović and Nikola Kalinić were in Fener and played for the national team. They had two days off between the end of Fenerbahce’s season and the national team. How would you function if you had two days of vacation? That is why I am grateful to every member of the national team who responds and comes to the national team. It’s cruel, sometimes I feel sorry for our national team members. We recently had the example of Shengelija, how far he traveled to go and play for the Georgian national team in the FIBA windows. After a flight like that, you need three days to recover”.