By Stefan Djordjevic/ info@eurohoops.net
With the leagues across Europe having different takes on how the 2019-20 season should be finished as well as how to decide on the rankings, the Basketball Champions League will have to make extra effort to form the lineup for the 2020-21 campaign.
That is especially the case for the leagues which decided not to validate the standings of the past season, as is the case in France. BCL CEO Patrick Comninos explained to BeBasket that they will take into account the competition’s objective rankings which take into account everything teams accomplished since its beginnings.
In the case of French squads, that would mean JDA Dijon and SIG Strasbourg stay: “This creates for us and the leagues – but in the end it is up to us to decide – a very, very special situation in choosing the clubs that will participate in the BCL next season. As we cannot use the classification of this 2019/20 season (in Jeep ELITE), we must go and see the results for the previous years. It is meritocratic. We have a very objective ranking on each club which participated in the BCL – 112 over the four seasons. When we see the ranking over the four seasons of the BCL, we see that the only French club to have participated in the BCL each time is Strasbourg. They have demonstrated in the past four seasons their ability to produce results on the field. It has value, especially for this season.”
He also noted that this is a very unique situation and that they don’t aim to make it standard criteria for qualifying to BCL.