The market of young Russian players keeps on growing. More and more Superleague clubs decide to start to compete for the talents. We decided to discuss the question with the coach of CSKA young team Leonid Spirin who is responsible for the selection.
- The competition grows pretty fast, the situation changes every year, - says the coach. – The large number of the clubs, including the ones from regions, pay more attention to the youngest. The work with the players starts early and it is very important to be the first to find a player and to sign him. Unfortunately sometimes it is impossible.
Why so? CSKA is a club with traditions and reputation…
- Frequently I have problems with the parents of the player. They are inspired with the talks of other club’s representatives who used to say that it is impossible to make a good career in CSKA so it is better for a player to perform in a regional club where he has more chances to become a leader. Sometimes it is hard to explain that only in the presence of the other strong players their son can progress. This is the way how we lost one talented guy from Pavlodar. His parents decided that it would be better for the player to move to Novosibirsk.
Who of the players from the current roster did you follow more?
- It was a hard task to find Semen Shashkov. It took a lot of energy and efforts to follow his progress at the practices and at the games. I hope we were not mistaken with the guy. I am sure in his talent. His has a good basketball body but still has some problems with the basketball education as well as the most of the other guys.
Did anyone of the players surprise you?
- Sometimes it happens that you follow a usual player for rather a long time but then in a very short period he makes a great progress not only in this height but also in basketball state of mind. Alexey Shved is an example of such a transformation. It was hard to imagine a year and a half ago that he would be able to join the team. But this guard added 15 centimeters of the height in three months and became a real player.
Did any of the guys have doubts whether to start the professional career or not?
- Of course no. All of them try to do the best in order to make career in CSKA. They have a desire but miss the basketball education that interferes to perceive the words of the coaching staff. Week concentration is the reason why it took the players longer to understand the things we want to tell them.
You have mentioned that sometimes it is hard to talk to the relatives of the guys. How much time do you spend talking to them?
- It depends on the player. It took me to call Shved’s father only once to make an agreement. On the other hand now we have Mikhail Lyapah from Evraz at the try outs. This is the only achievement about the player in a year and a half.
What is the ‘hardest’ region to get a player from?
- Moscow and Moscow region. Because almost every sports school has a contract with a Superleague club and the players go directly to it.
What kind of information you collect on the player before inviting him to the team?
- The starting point is the stats. If the player is the top scorer of his team it usually means that he is the leader. We have goal to gather all the best players so we need leaders. But we should not forget that the centers at the age of 12-14 years are not the great shooters. It is worth to look at the tall player to realize if he is coordinated, has a good body for basketball and right state of mind. The second point of the information is talk with the player and his coach in order to find out if he is a leader, if he can play in a team where all the other guys are as talented as he is himself. And after we receive all the information we decide if the player is worth to join CSKA.
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