Jonas Miklovas of basketnews.lt has been providing us with great news and insight from Lithuania from the very beginning of BallinEurope. We’re glad that he is providing his information on the current situation of Zagiris Kaunas.
As already reported on BallinEurope, Zalgiris Kaunas is going through some rough times at the moment: They’ve lost two Baltic league games in a row, they’ve got only 10 active players and players haven’t been paid yet for this season. So what’s the story behind that?
The problems began at the beginning of autumn, when the municipality of Kaunas refused to pay its part to team. The city is one of Zalgiris’ biggest supporters, paying approximately <!– /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:””; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –> €1.5 million per season, representing 1/4 of Zalgiris’ budget. The municipality hasn’t exactly refused to pay, but promises to pay later. Zalgiris vice president Gediminas Navikauskas claimed that money from the municipality usually arrives in September, while other sponsors transfer their money in January. So as the more municipality waited, the bigger the hole in Zalgiris’ budget became.
It was reported in the local media that players did not get paid for the first months of the season and were therefore considering the possibility of not going to Baltic league games. Marcus Brown convinced players to play but the outcome wasn’t bright: Zalgiris lost to Valmiera and then to ASK Riga.
The last few days have been extremely heated between club and municipality. On Monday, a bank loan was granted to Zalgiris to cover the municipality’s obligations. However, it is yet unknown when this loan will be transferred into Zalgiris’ account, as many terms and conditions must be met by the warrantor’s side.
So what do we have now? We have an unmotivated Zalgiris team with 10 players (11th Mantas Kalnietis is injured and out until mid-Novermber) two weeks away from the Euroleague opener. The team desperately needs one or two guards, but no one is willing to go to a franchise under such circumstances.
Ah well, at least we have one good piece of news: On September 26, construction finally began on a new Zalgiris arena with capacity for 15,000. The whole “we build it/we build it not” story was like a soap opera, so getting it underway at last is something surprising. Let’s just hope that Zalgiris is still around when the arena is finished in autumn 2010.
