Spartak is already in Cyprus

The trip to the first game in this season will last 5 days for our team. It’s planned before that the first match of Eurocup qualification with Etha Engomis will be on September 27. But the home team decided to change the date for September 28. This is not prohibited by FIBA rules. So Spartak will return at home on Thursday.

All 12 players that are in roster of Spartak now pcame to Cyprus. Only Viktor Keiru continues to recover after leg injury in Russia. Our team began its trip by air from St.Petersburg to Larnaca and then in 3,5 hours it took the bus and went to Nicosia where the team lives now, have practices and will play the match.

On Sunday in the evening Spartak had the practice on the court of Academy of sport. On Monday in the morning the players had exercises in the gym of the hotel Holiday Inn where they live with the physical coach Georgy Artemiev. At 16.00 there was the second practice on the court of the academy. On Tuesday will be one more. But Etha and Spartak will play in another place.

Now our club talks with the representatives of Etha Engomis about getting the signal for broadcasting the match by Russian TV channels Saint-Petersburg and NTV+.
The game will start at 18.30 CET on Wednesday, September 28.

Jurij Zdovc, head coach of Spartak: “I am very satisfied how we worked in the training camps. We worked really hard. In Bormio we played 6 games and in the half of the matches we played really good. In 3 games we played good during 40 minutes and in 3 games – 20 minutes. It was enough to win the games but it was not enough for me to be satisfied. We didn’t play against the teams of very high level. Also we had such small problems as injures but it’s normal. Also 2 players arrived to us and this fact a little bit confused the chemistry of the team. They had to play because we didn’t have other games before these matches with Etha. But on the other side they didn’t know my philosophy, the rules of how team played. But they are professionals and everything is ok now.
We started to prepare for the game with Etha Engomis last week. We got the information about how they played in the tournament in Bulgaria; we got some reports from my friends in Cyprus. This team beat Aris and Lukoil in the event. People there played together for several years and it’s very good for their team. We must play 120 percents to be ready to win both games. We are much better team than Etha but we’ll win if we are ready tactically for the game and we are concentrated.