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Shay Shtriks: We decided to go with 12 teams, so everybody will be happy
Shay Shtriks (gong.bg)
Sports Director of Balkan International Basketball League (BIBL) Shay Shtriks gave comments right after announcement of the teams for the opening season in the new competition:
“We decided to have 12 teams. I was at F.Y.R. of Macedonia last weekend and I saw the basketball they play there. There was at least 4 000 people at every game. Three teams from there want to be inside, there are 3 teams, which like to be inside from Serbia as well, 4 from Bulgaria, so we decided to make the teams 12 and definitely 3 from F.Y.R. of Macedonia. We’ll keep a wild-card and we’ll see which club will get it. It might be team from Bulgaria, Serbia or Romania to take it. We have one month to think about it. In the meantime we will see how clubs like Balkan, CSKA Sofia or two other teams from Serbia will react. There will be 20 games more in the tournament, so everybody will be happy, the sponsors as well. We have enough power to make 72 games, not 52 games.
As for Balkan Botevgrad, we didn’t decide “No” to them, we decided “Yes” for Levski and Cherno more, because of the information we received so far. I personally spoke with the head coach of Balkan and I understood from him, that nobody knows what is the future of the club for the next season. It’s now our job to discuss with the clubs their future budget or program. We need to run this League. However we didn’t say “No” to Balkan. We have one more place and if Balkan will have a good team, it’s OK to play in the Balkan league according to our parameters - gym, sponsor. I don’t think it’s good to a Bulgarian team to lose by 20 points. We have one month to decide. Also CSKA Sofia applied, but we didn’t accept them, so we’ll see. We have enough time to see what’s going on, because there are 2 other teams from Serbia, which want to be inside as well.”
