The main event of the year has started. The team together with club’s staff arrived to Madrid to the Euroleague Final Four.
The participation in the deciding stage of the season looks ordinary for the Army Men. CSKA gets into quartet of continental top-tournament for the 12th time in 13 seasons. No other grands can even dream about it. But not so many people realize what an amount of work you have to do to reach this level. Just take Olympiacos, 2-time Euroleague champion in past 3 years – look how the team celebrated its Final Four qualification! Take Fenerbahce-Ulker – very strong club, both in sports and budget – but it comes here for the first time! Probably this is the reason why the team from Istanbul came to Spain earlier than others (with exclusion of the hosts) – on Tuesday. Looks like they want to feel the taste of big basketball celebration as much as they can.
For the Red-Blues this is a kind of family celebration. Final Four is not just an event to report about your yearly successes. This is an event that unites. This is why the Army Men have big company with them. This time the players and coaches had not only their families around, but also the veterans, staff, junior team, dance team, journalists. This is why OrenAir (the company belonging to Aeroflot, CSKA Official Carrier) provided big and very comfortable Boeing 777 for the flight.
Even with wives, children and parents the players did not feel pressed onboard, their trip went quite regularly. Only Sonny Weems was jokingly disappointed with the way his first name was written on the chair cover – his real name Clarence was used. The forward likes his nickname to be used. Though Sonny quickly forgot about the nuance – he took the camera from the club’s master Mikhail Serbin and started making pictures of the juniors he knows very well – Astapkovich, Maleyko, Gavrilov and Gankevich.
By the way many of the travelers were jealous: right after the arrival Mikhail Serbin was supposed to go to the green glass of famous Santiago Bernabeu to make some pictures from the Champions League Semifinal Second Leg game Real Madrid – Juventus. But the luggage delay did not give him this chance.
But even outside of Bernabeu stands the basketball players could not hide from big football night. Andrey Vatutin invited the team to one of the restaurants not so far from the stadium – not surprisingly it is fully devoted to Real. Some family atmosphere was found here too – the team stayed in closed circle. The Army Men President remembers perfectly how useful was to have this kind of visit in Bilbao in 2012, on the night before the deciding game of playoff series. Besides Wednesday is the last day when you can allow yourself to relax a bit.
After going back to the hotel Nando De Colo met his legendary compatriots – World Cup champions Thierry Henry, Robert Pires, Christian Karambeau and Marceille Desailly. The Frenchmen worked as an experts on the main event of the day. “Imagine, Henry came to greet me!” – said Nando. It’s great that the Eurobasket champion is still able to be so excited to meet his idols.
Hard work takes its turn, and well-experienced fighters know that Thursday will be the busiest day of the Final Four. It features not only practice but several additional events as well.
