IN THE GAME

Two nice interviews by Ballineurope and Heinnews offered us some insight on the Euroleague’s plans for the future. While Bertomeu did not speak about the 09/10 Euroleague system and the newest development – ESAKE’s and ACB’s response – regarding that matter [the interview was conducted at the Euroleague Final Four in Berlin], ALBA Berlin manager Marco Baldi offered his opinion on the future system, including Euroleague’s decision to hand out three [one plus two, in fact] starting spots to France, a move that has been leading to criticism throughout Europe.

In his Ballineurope interview, Baldi says he doesn’t understand Euroleague’s decision to assign three spots to France, saying that “France is not known for fulfilling the Euroleague criteria at its best, so I don’t really get why they got that ticket.” Furthermore, he – not surprisingly – welcomed the aspect of stability the three-year-licences bring to the clubs. It is certainly a great thing for those clubs that do receive such a licence, but it certainly doesn’t create parity.

Fighting imparity … this is what Euroleague CEO Jordi Bertomeu called a priority in his interview with German journalist Martin Fünkele for Heinnews. I want to add that his proposed Euroleague system rather increases imparity than decreasing it.

However, some interesting aspects he mentioned:

• The 10.000 arena minimum standard will come to effect in the 2011/12 season
• He mentioned Siena, Istanbul, Vitoria, Kaunas and Lyon as cities where projects to build new arenas already exist
• Bertomeu expects from Anschütz to not only build new arenas in several locations, but also help manage existing ones

As for the future Euroleague system, C-Licence [EuroCup winner] team Lietuvos Rytas just recently won the LKL championship and will hence qualify for the Euroleague regular season with a B-Licence, thus opening up a wildcard instead of the C-Licence for another team.

First problem for Bertomeu to solve though is the many disagreements regarding the future Euroleague system. He’ll need to have the right touch to bring all those different parties together, and he’s certainly not one to envy at the moment. If he doesn’t succeed – who knows what happens. It is not as if the splitting of leagues never happend in the past …