By Aris Barkas/ barkas@eurohoops.net
Khimki is on the verge of a players’ strike, but the Euroleague game against Maccabi Tel Aviv will be held as scheduled. As it was first reported last week by Israeli journalist David Pick via twitter, the players of Khimki are ready to go on strike, because they have not been paid by the team for the past three months.
Since then, there were many rumors about what the players’ intentions, however everything became clear in this interview of captain Vitaly Fridzon to izvestia.ru. As Fridzon said: “There is a person on the team who has not been paid since October. This can’t go on. On Monday, we will play our VTB League game and then we will have a team meeting in which we will decide what we will do”.
The strike is more than possible, but it will not affect the upcoming Euroleague game against Maccabi Tel Aviv as Fridzon clarified: “Of course not! It would be too bad for Russian basketball. It’s the Euroleague, the main event in Europe. It will be bad for our country. But we will not play in the next game against Krasnoyarsk in the Russian PBL”.
Fridzon doesn’t know what the future holds for the team and what caused the financial woes: “Maybe it’s the change in the Moscow region governor, maybe something else. But the club has a president. He knows all the answers and he doesn’t talk to us. We have no contact with him. So, no one knows how the problem will be solved”.
UPDATE: Khimki won the game against Turow for VTB League 91-72, the team has a 8-3 record in group A and the players will practice individually until the game against Maccabi.