CSKA starting practices

Yesterday evening the first practice of CSKA with Dusan Ivkovic and players Jon Robert Holden, Marcus Brown, Antonio Granger, Egor Vialtsev and Vasily Zavoruev took place in CSKA Arena. After the end of it the coach of the army team told us about team plans during pre-season:

Now we are in the situation when the pre-season is split. And this split is national teams part and club’s part. It is very difficult situation. For the first life in my life, in my career I do not have time to go somewhere with players most time in mountain on some level and have basic preparation for three weeks like the second step in pre-season preparation. We modified it. This moment there are young players in Moscow who were in Finland in pre-season camp. We start this first week with young players and three American players.

We gave one week more for players who participated in Olympic Games who will come to Moscow on September, 6. They will start practices on the next week. On 10th of September we have a trip to Vrsac, Serbia and Montenegro just to play our first tournament. After that we have one big tournament in Italy in Udine when we play against Skipper and Benetton and then game for the first of third place. Then we will play against Udine and Slovenian team Slovan. In this period we will have three American players and our newcomers. They will have necessary experience in international games. We will play with six players of the main team and six players from the junior team. So, it will be very young team.

So on 22th of September we will finish our international program of the games. We have to meet our team for the first time with all our senior players who will come from Russian National Team after qualifying games of European Championship. For the first time we will complete and spend 5 days camp close to Saint Petersburg in Kirishi. I think we decide to be in the camp for two reasons: to have the players in one good condition all together and work out hard. And immediately after the camp we have one big memorial tournament Belov-Kondrashin Cup in Saint Petersburg on 2nd and 3th of October. When it finishes we have immediately after it preparation for big preseason game against Utah Jazz on 8th of October that we organizes with the big pleasure. After that we have to start the season. We have whole week for preparation and after that we have three games on the road. From 18th to 22th of October we will play against EURAS, Lokomotiv Novosibirsk and Universitet Surgut.