Kamil Novak: We understand that Balkan League is very important for the region

Mr. Kamil Novak - FIBA Executive Director Europe, visited Kosovo at attend the celebration of the local federation being accepted in FIBA and the semifinal of EUROHOLD Balkan League between KB Sigal Prishtina and KK Kozuv. Before the match Novak took some minutes from his time to give the following interview:

- Are you happy with the decision you took to accept Kosovo in FIBA?
- There′s no question. We are very proud to have Kosovo as 215th member of FIBA and 52nd member of FIBA Europe. We understand that′s it has been a long journey for the federation and now that they are in a new era has already started - the daily work of developing the national federation, the daily work of developing the national team, the youth programs and all basketball activities. It′s amazing what the federation has organised in a short period of time. I know very well when I was able to confirim and I know it′s a very short period of time. Everything here is very professional - the decoration, the branding, the movie. We received a very valuable member of our organization.

- At a recent Board meeting EUROHOLD Balkan League was recognized by FIBA Europe - are you satisfied with the way it has been developing over the years?
- We understand that this league is very important for this specific region of Europe. It has support of all national federations of the participating teams and they also submitted all the documents about its structure as it was asked by FIBA. So the decision for the re-recognition was actually a very easy task for the board. We are pleased and we hope that the league will go on and it will continue to develop the basketball in this region.

- How do you find the role of the Balkan League in the Balkan region?
- We understand that there are not many high quality teams in those countries and for them is very important to compete against other quality teams. We have some other regional leagues and especially over the last year, after the congress in Istanbul, we have decided to somehow re-reconstruct the club competitions and that′s why we started the re-recognition process of the regional leagues. So congratulations for the Balkan League for receiving the re-recognition and again, I wish them best of luck and good results for the future.

- Eurobasket 2015 will be the first to be held in so many countries. How difficult was to take that decision?
- This project is not a new idea. The new approach though was not to have joint bid but to have indipendent bids so the federations can submit a bid just to host the first round, no matter who the others would be. So this was a new approach and I can tell you that internally we had huge discussions about it and not everybody was supporting from the beginning. Then with the situation about Ukraine it became an issue and we put it on the table already for 2015. We still have some time to go there but I can tell you, already now, that there is a huge excitement. Just the ticket sales in the four cities for the preliminary rounds is fantastic. All the national federations are under big pressure from the fans who want to buy tickets, which is great. I always try to stay with my feet on the ground but I think this might be the Eurobasket with the highest attendance ever by far for the first round. Don′t forget that we have four venues with 10 000+ seats. Another excitement is for the Final stage with the football arena in Lille. Ok, it′s only half of it but still it will be "only" 27 or 28 000 seats. So I think this is another milestone in the history of European basketball. We are not there yet. We are working together with the local organizing committees and the national federations. I′m really looking forward to it and I can′t wait to be there, be part of it and enjoy another top event of the European basketball.