By Antonis Stroggylakis / info@eurohoops.net
Former four-time EuroLeague champion as a coach and current president of the Serbian Olympic Committee Bozidar Maljkovic criticized EuroLeague Basketball for not including more teams from the Balkan area.
In a TV interview, per Sporski Zurnal, Maljkovic recalled a conversation he had with EuroLeague CEO Jordi Bertomeu. “I asked him [Jordi Bertomeu] how he sees the fact that there aren’t any EuroLeague teams between Milan and Athens. I think that it’s realistic for another club – Partizan, Buducnost – to be in EuroLeague because of the respect for this territory that has given so many top players. Now there are Doncic, Bogdanovic, Bjelica, a large number of basketball players from Croatia, to not forget someone. That’s an injustice.”
According to EuroLeague’s current allocation criteria, the ABA League champion is the only team from the area that can participate in the competition by having a priority for one of the annual wild cards.
Maljkovic, who won two EuroLeague titles with Toni Kukoc’s and Dino Radja’s Jugoplastica, one with Limoges and one with a Dominic Wilkins-led Panathinaikos, added the following. “The EuroLeague said ‘we don’t give any gifts.’ I have a question for them – What has Zenit done for European basketball more than Partizan? Because there’s Gazprom. What is it if not a gift? It would be gentlemanly that two more clubs, the best in Europe to enter EuroLeague: Partizan Belgrade and Virtus Bologna.”
Partizan president Ostoja Mihailovic was hoping that his club would join EuroLeague for the next season, an ambition that was also shared by Virtus Bologna. EuroLeague decided to have the 18 teams of 2019-2020 competing in the next season without removing or adding another club.
Mihailovic said that he will address the decision of EuroLeague in a press conference on June 4.