DECLINE IN PLAY

In recent years, collective sports have been going through a rough patch in Azerbaijan. They have almost identical problems - the lack of a competitive national championship, the departure of a number of leading sportsmen abroad and uncertain prospects in the international arena.

No strength in depth

Quite recently, the country was gripped by a real boom in volleyball due to the success of the national team and the AzerRail club. The national team made it to the final stage of the European champion where they took fourth place in 2005, they also played in the world championship and were quite successful. We can say the same about AzerRail, who made it into the Champions League after the tournament of top teams and once reached the Final Four.

However, all this now belongs to the past. Now we can only dream of major victories. There are several reasons for this, including the lack of strength in depth. The point is that for many years the teams, both national and club teams, have been playing with the same complement. When leading players began to leave, there was no-one to replace them. Specifically, since the departure of Inessa Qorxmaz, Yelena Shabovta and Alla Hasanova, the team's potential has declined significantly, and this has affected results. Although the national team has made it to the final of the European championship, their performance in the upcoming tournament does not inspire special optimism. The reason is the absence of worthy replacements for players who turned out to be "one-offs". 

On the other hand, mainly due to the low level of the national championship, from which many volleyball players have departed, the coaches led by Faiq Qarayev decided that the best way out of the situation was for our sportswomen to continue their careers abroad. Their main place of deployment is Turkey - Valeriya Korotenko and Oksana Parkhomenko signed contracts with Fenerbahce, while the best player of the last Champions League, Natalya Mammadova, now shines for Turk Telekom. As a result, AzerRail did not get into the league this year; their ranking would not have allowed them to do so. Over the last few years, the railway team was almost entirely responsible for the points which fixed the country's volleyball rating - which has now fallen dramatically.

Qarayev viewed this season as a testing ground for the reserves, but the experiment was over before it even began. AzerRail made it into the EVC (European Volleyball Confederation) Cup, but lost to Holland's Longa twice in the first round. In both matches, our team had chances to win, but still lost. Even the fans did not help, despite their desperate support for the club in the first match in Quba where AzerRail were hosts at the district's Olympic complex. Now that the international season is over for the "railway team", their volleyball players are unlikely to gain enough practice. The younger generation should train by playing in tournaments in which they can gain experience and assess their strengths. So, considering the latest results, Qarayev will have to rely only on tried and tested players and not take an experimental team to the European championship. We remember last season when, for a number of reasons, a whole number of experienced sportswomen were sidelined, including Oksana Parkhomenko, Natalya Mammadova, Kseniya Kovalenko, Lida Maksimenko and Oksana Mammadyarova. These crucial losses affected the team both at the European Grand Prix and in the continental championship, in which they failed to compete for medals. Now all the key players seem to be fit, and the national team intends to make up lost ground in the European arena, though it will be very difficult to do so against the strong teams from Russia, Italy, Poland, Holland and Germany.

Basketball without Kurtinaitis

The situation is also difficult in basketball, which began to make progress following the arrival of Rimas Kurtinaitis in Azerbaijan. The 1988 Olympic champion took up the job in quite a sprightly manner, took all the best players to Qala and training under the guidance of this specialist enabled local sportsmen to learn much. Of course, the foreigners he invited were not the best players, but their arrival was very important for the development of basketball in the country. Further, according to Rimas himself, our national school was trying to cover in a short period ground that other teams had taken 50 years to cover. The Olympic champion believes that one of his main achievements is that our basketball players began to cope with tasks which they had not encountered before. This was mainly brought about by physical and practical training, after which the team could practice three times a day. The players started making progress and overtook some foreigners who were dismissed. "First we recruited seven foreigners. Whereas before they played better than local basketball players, now home-grown talents have surpassed them in their development," said Kurtinaitis. As a consequence, four of the seven foreign players were sent back home and, instead, we recruited basketball players of a higher level.

In his three years' work in the country, Kurtinaitis turned the Azerbaijani national team into winners at the Islamic Games, after which the team celebrated victory in the Challenge Cup - the qualifying tournament of the European championship - in Division C. Interest in the national championship increased considerably, though Qala held sway for several years. As in the North American Basketball Association, All Stars Games were held several times at the Olympic complex. Teams combining Azerbaijani and foreign players participated. The match turned into a real show in which the winners of a three-point goals competition were established.

However, as soon as Kurtinaitis left Azerbaijan, basketball's development stalled and once more it stewed in its own juice. As a consequence, at the beginning of the following season, some of our leading players decided to try their luck in the Georgian championship, where they play for NTD. The team are confidently leading the championship, thanks to the performances of Tahir Baxsiyev, Fuad Niftaliyev, Zaur Pasayev and Anar Sariyev. The level of our championship has dropped even further without these leading players and is of no special interest to fans. The condition of the understudies to the national team was demonstrated graphically at the continental youth championship in Romania, at which the team took one of the last places, showing a complete lack of competitiveness.

Despite their recent victory (second victory) in the qualifying tournament of Division C, the national first team are marking time. Having won this competition under the leadership of Kurtinaitis, the team decided to play in Division C again instead of rising to a higher level and they won again. In any case, emotions generated by this victory were much weaker because a victory in a tournament of "the weakest" for the second time is a somewhat hollow one. Now the team needs to rise to a higher level, but will they be able to continue their successful showing without strong back-up or international practice?

Basketball has its own traditions in Azerbaijan and, naturally, the current state of affairs does not inspire any special optimism. In any case, after the departure of Kurtinaitis the sport stepped back into the shadows, while the lack of a competitive reserve team and the falling level of the national championship show that the federation leadership needs to rectify the situation as a matter of priority. Otherwise, basketball will finally die in the country and no Kurtinaitis will help us.