Kauno Diena reports that Zalgiris could have old sponsor Sabtajus Kalmanovicius back. He is seriously interested in helping the club get back on its feet. For those who don't know who Kalmanovicius is. He was sposnoring Zalgiris that year when The Greens won Euroleague in 1999. The next year he left the team and Zalgiris back at the bottom of Euroleague for a few seasons. Kalmanovicius was prepared to keep most of the players who won Euroleague title or sign adequate replacements. But other members of the board had different thoughts and brought the team where it is now. Meanwhile Kalamanovicius joined women Euroleague club Spartak and helped it win 3 Euroleague titles. He gives the best conditions to his team and always aim for the best results. From that point of view he would be definitely a great sponsor. Let's hope these talks will not stay talks and some action will be taken.
P.S. Zalgiris was given 2-week deadline to solve their financial problems or they lose Euroleague A License.
The solution was found eventually.
[url="http://www.talkbasket.net/news/vladimir-romanov-saves-zalgiris.html"]http://www.talkbasket.net/news/vladimir-ro...s-zalgiris.html[/url]
I wonder what plans Romanov has for Zalgiris. It would be great if he decides to invest heavily in the team next year already. But I doubt that.
[quote name='Vilius' post='15730' date='May 6 2009, 08:21 PM']The solution was found eventually.
[url="http://www.talkbasket.net/news/vladimir-romanov-saves-zalgiris.html"]http://www.talkbasket.net/news/vladimir-ro...s-zalgiris.html[/url]
I wonder what plans Romanov has for Zalgiris. It would be great if he decides to invest heavily in the team next year already. But I doubt that.[/quote]
Well at least the team is saved. But indeed there are many question marks regarding the future, especially regarding players. Romanov is also known for being excentric and so, hope he doesn't harm the team in any way.
If Romanov wants to make Zalgiris at least Euroleague Top 8 material then it would be great. It is always better when a team has one owner or a few owners but one of them playing a key role in my opinion. The reason I think so is that one owner is more motivated to bring success to the team. Take PAO and OLY as an examples. They rich owners and they want their teams to be the best in Europe. They are spending lots of money in order to achieve that.
In that case the owner is personally concerned in the performance of his team. Other sponsors who pay the team in exchange for advertisement don't have that interest in the way the team is performing. They have a concrete market and their main interest is that their product will be seen by a certain group of people. Of course if a team plays well then the chances of having more people seeing their advertisement are higher. But as I said the main concern is not the results of the team.
I believe that UBIG has the right financial power to turn Zalgiris into a really good team. The thing is that the investments in the club don't pay off in basketball. So it's all about the ambitions of the owners.
I'm loving this, a Russian saving one of Lithuania's symbols <img src='http://www.talkbasket.net/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tongue.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='
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