CSM Oradea – the last in Europe on using homegrown players
There is only one team in the entire continent who is not introducing almost at all their local players. NO matter if we speak about the Fiba Europe Cup, where they are playing, or about Euroleague, Eurocup, Basketball Champions League or even Aba League, Balkan League or Central European Basketball League.
This team is CSM ORADEA, a Romanian club who is bringing in every year too many foreigners, while they are minimizing the role of the homegrown players. Last evening in the embarrassing loss suffered at home against Tsmoki-Minsk, only 2 Romanian born players entered on the court. They finished with 0 points in only 11 minutes played together. And it’s about the Romanian young talent, Tudor Fometescu, a very promising player and Catalin Baciu (2.14 m) – a member of the Romanian national team, having a lot of experience in the first league. I am sure they are better than this.
On the other side, the visitors, Tsmoki-Minsk had only 3 foreigners, basing their game on the larger rotation of the local players, who had a huge contribution to the final blow (89-73). The homegrown players of the Belarusian squad played 112 minutes, scoring 40 points.
The Romanian club, CSM ORADEA is already famous for their marginalization of the local talent. The leaders of the organization don’t understand that the only solution for sustainable basketball is to grow and introduce on the court Romanian born players. To give them credit to play 20 minutes per game, instead of using them only for 20 seconds when you need a foul to be made. No team in Europe is acting so rude with their local players.
The only strategy of CSM ORADEA is to try to bring in more Americans every season, but this could not work on a long-term. The huge presence on the court of the homegrown players is the solution chosen by all basketball clubs in entire Europe, no matter if we speak of very good clubs or average clubs from poor countries. I can give you thousands of examples which will include literally all the squads in Europe and NOWHERE, but NOWHERE the local-born players are introduced only 11 minutes in a game.
Photo: Fiba Europe Cup
Gratian Cormos
