The special opinion of UMMC CEO Maxim Ryabkov
After the European Championship, a week passed, during which various speakers expressed their opinion on the current state of affairs in the national team and in Russian women’s basketball in general. I would like to put aside emotions and express a few thoughts that do not fit into the context of the prohibitive mainstream, focused mainly on the popular and primitive problem of the limit, and try to consider the situation in a comprehensive way.
Despite all the dissatisfaction with the result, it is impossible to say that the performance of the national team left a sense of despair – it is absolutely clear that the potential of the team is higher than its position in the final table. And this obvious potential today is the result of joint work of the federation, schools and clubs, which have brought up and today work with players at different stages of their formation up to the match with Sweden, in which the final two minutes were unsuccessful.
These two minutes should not obscure the objective facts that lie on the other side of the scale. First, the Russian national team successfully passed the qualifying tournament – won 6 victories in 6 matches. Secondly, in the run-up to Eurobasket, a successful series of friendly matches was held, during which the future European champions – the Spanish national team – were defeated on their court, and only in overtime was the game lost to the future finalists – the French national team.
Thirdly, we got an objectively heavy group in the first stage with the national teams of Serbia, Belgium and Belarus, called the “Group of Death” by all experts, including the official portal fiba.com, which predetermined a heavy grid for the playoffs with a place already in the quarterfinals against Spain.
Tough limits on legionnaires have existed in our championship for 15 years. Moreover, they were revised towards tightening after Eurobasket 2013. The limit in the Russian women’s championship – 4 foreign players for the match out of 12 declared – is much tougher than in the men’s championship of Russia – 6 foreign players per match. At the same time, there are only 3 clubs in the Women’s Premier League that use the quota as a whole.
In addition to the restrictions in the championship, in 2014 a new format of the Russian Cup was introduced – without the participation of foreign players. As a result, the tournament, which was one of the top events in the world of women’s basketball and presented many matches included in the gold fund of the Games, almost completely lost its status and the interest of spectators, not bringing the expected initiators of the “reform” of the return to the players-Russians. By the way, this year for the first time since 2004 the Final Four of the Cup of the country will not be played.