The executive director of the Euroleague announced the expansion and new format, ruled out the possibility of the Russian teams returning to the competition soon, but what does all this mean for Crvena zvezda and Partizan.
It is being advertised more and more in the media Marshal Glikman, executive director of the Euroleague and more and more talk about possible reforms of this competition. American who made it to the team Dejan Bodiroga to take care of the most important issues of the elite European competition now spoke about the format of the competition during his visit to Israel.
“We need to grow the league. I don’t have a magic format for now, but 18 teams is not enough: we need to have more teams than there are currently open spots. I like the round-robin system with home and away games, and I also love the Final Four. Maybe we should consider the possibility of more playoff rounds“, he emphasized at the beginning of the conversation.
Glikman then talked about the possibilities of opening the market for teams from big and rich cities where basketball is not the sport in focus. Trying to make teams in London, Paris, Dubai…
“I believe that Paris and London will be part of the Euroleague in the future. Five years ago, “Deloit” did a study for us and we said that it is possible to expand the market to Germany, France and England. There will be no team from Dubai in the Euroleague next season, and we have had many conversations with them over the last two years. If we manage to get a team from Dubai, it will happen after a lot of planning and evaluation. It is a different and specific situation, just look at the logistics. It takes four hours to fly to Tel Aviv first, and then seven hours to get to Dubai, it’s not easy. But it’s a growing market, there’s a lot of money there, but there’s no history, no tradition and no league, so there’s no team. We want basketball to grow a little there,” Glikman emphasized.
He also announced the possible return of Russian teams to the Euroleague, and it is obvious that this will not happen anytime soon. “There is no turning back before the end of the war. We will continue to follow the decisions of the International Olympic Committee and other major organizations and act accordingly,” he added.
What does all this mean for Serbian basketball? For now, the ABA league has one place in the competition and that is as a “special invitation” that it receives every year, and after this season in which two Belgrade clubs played in the elite, it is still not known what the situation will be in the next season.
(WORLD)