By Aris Barkas/ barkas@eurohoops.net
On an interview to Greek portal “Sport24”, FIBA secretary general Andreas Zagklis once more addressed the matter of finding common ground in European basketball between the Euroleague and FIBA.
According to Zagklis: “Finding the solution must be the objective goal, obviously on both sides. But finding solutions presupposes the decompression of feelings, which, we cannot ignore it. Those feelings have been expressed in the past and may have been exposed to an excessive degree publicly. Secondly, the solution demands to some extent the partial alignment of the strategy. There’s a joint set of activities we have with the NBA in Africa for example. These are actions of a strategy aligned and to be more specific: we have as the main objective the expansion of the basketball family and its union. To become the No1 sports community in the world. If we all share this goal, I think will be the very important first step for further discussions, which, of course, as soon as the conditions are more mature, will take place”.
The FIBA secretary general also spoke about the upcoming FIBA World Cup: “The World Cup is at the heart of the new system, but I would not compare it to the Olympics. Sometimes, when they ask me about the windows, I say that we have to see the new system as a whole: The fact that it gives a free summer, that we have moved the World Cup in a year that has no winter Olympics. For some countries, this is very important. So we are expanding the tournament from 24 to 32 teams and we have been playing for 16 months for the participation of this event. All this is a chain link, aiming to bring the final tournaments to levels that have never been. And I think that we will manage to do it in China, in terms of attracting interest, TV rates, and recognition. In the past, all the basketball world was turning its attention to the World Cup just after the end of the national league playoffs. We were used to saying that “do not forget, in two months there is the World Cup”. Now we are talking about the World Cup of 2019, as early as September 2017. We look at the roster of the national teams and behind each player, there is a history of the qualifiers”.
Andreas Zagklis is Greek, so he was asked about the current situation of the Greek league with Olympiacos being relegated by choice. At this point, it’s clear that FIBA doesn’t want to interfere: “The first thing that someone in my position look is Greece means on the map of world basketball. I think that in both terms of national and clubs successes, but also in terms of organizing big events, one of which we were fortunate to see in Crete, Greece has a very important place in the world basketball, so whatever is going on in the Greek league, we have to follow closely and make our own analysis of the situations, while at the same time we stand on the side of the federation to face the situation. In this case, we have a phenomenon that is quite complex, which is often simplified as an officiating problem but I think it has to do with a structural issue, which more than one national league is meeting today. I am not just talking about the traditional rivalry of the two major clubs, but also of their position within and facing the national championship, which is also related to their position within, but also to the national federation in which belongs the issue of the officiating. The federation and the League have all the tools at a national level to resolve the situation. I believe that, as I said earlier, for international issues, if we pull the lights away from the strong feelings on both sides and the teams together with the federation align their strategy, there is no doubt that too quickly a balanced solution can be found within the institutional framework of the federation and the laws of the country”.