Is Greece really that poor talent-wise lately that they need to go down the line Turkish youth National Teams have, more than a couple of times? The fact that the Greek justice is now trying to revoke Alfa Dialo Fasengas, who has already represented Greece U18 in Vilnius tournament some days ago, Greek citizenship is definitely a sign that something is fishy in this case.
Some weeks ago TalkBasket had introduced the African giant Alfa Dialo Fasengas Agibu, as his full name is, to the European fanbase.
In the following days the European, and not only, fans saw Fasengas in action (not much anyway) in the European U18 European Championship which was held in Vilnius, Lithuania.
The player received so much media exposure that Panathinaikos was quick to sign him to a multi-year contract and turn him into a club project.
But it seems that the story has a dark side, as the Greece Internal Affairs Ministry has officially made a statement that it has ordered an investigaiton to take place regarding possible fraud in the acquire of the Greek citizenship by the player.
“The internal affairs ministry (of Greece) has ordered the investigation, under oath, regarding the circumstances under which Panathinaikos player Dialo Fasegas Alfa Agibu (as the ministry refers to him) has acquired the Greek citizenship, on July 7th, 2010 by being recognised as an outside-of-marriage child (of a Greek male citizen) by the General Secretary of the Thessaly Province, as there are suspicions against him for the usage of fraudulent certificates in order to achieve the acquisition of the citizenship by deceiving the administration.
The internal affairs ministry is determined to allocate any legal and penal liabilities against the organs of the administration (of Thessaly province General Secretary) who were involved in the case and shed light to the case.”
For the record Fasengas averaged 1.4 rebound, 0.5 point and 0.1 assist for Greece U18 in 6.8 minutes during eight games.
Fasengas won’t be playing for any Greek National Teams anytime soon, until the case has been fully investigated and justice makes its decision. Of course that doesn’t mean he can’t be a Panathinaikos player as a foreigner. But without the Greek card in his hands, his career at Panathinaikos is expected to be a short one, to say the least.
One of the things the Greek fans take pride in is using only Greek players throughout their youth setups, and mainly in the senior National Team and TalkBasket’s humble opinion is that Greek basketball has, and can produce even more, basketball talent, in all ages, starting from 1 to 100 years of age and there is no need for them to utilise the methods of the Turkish basketball federation who is infamous for “adopting” and changing the names of youth prospects from former Yugoslavia, Soviet Union and Central Asia.
It seems like more trouble for the Greek Basketball Federation, literally just hours after everything happened during the Greece-Serbia “friendly” game.
TalkBasket sources say that FIBA won’t be taking both cases lightly, partially motivated by the clash between the former FIBA Europe president (and president of the Greek Basketball Federation) Giorgos Vasilakopoulos with FIBA’s new president Yvan Mainini (the two of them were the candidates for the presidency in last May elections).
FIBA has already sent a document to GBF asking for a full report on the Greece-Serbia game, while the GBF answer was “We are not apologising”. FIBA will take a decision on August 25, something oddly fast for FIBA, as in other similar events it took them moths to reach a decision.
