It’s not a coincidence that the Kaunas side changed their coaches twice this season with the Greek specialist Ilias Zouros being already the third head coach at the sidelines in Kaunas. Feeling the pulse of the team isn’t enough for the team for the scandalous businessman Romanov, who not only shares a desire be involved in running the club himself, but has taken rather dictatorial measures and frankly looks to have stepped over the line.
There had been many rumors about Romanov’s obsession over the control of his sports teams, as the owner of Zalgiris was known to have been hand-picking the starting lineups for his football sides. Nobody realized that this was a threat that Zalgiris fans needed to worry about, but right from the get-go of the season, the club seemed to implement a new way of playing basketball with hockey-like substitutions and mind-boggling decisions by the coaches.
Things were getting more and more suspicious, but both the coaches and Vladimir Romanov himself, hid behind the importance of ‘keeping the players fresh’ as the rotation in most games was mysteriously incomprehensible with everyone getting a go at solid minutes, no matter how badly a player played that night.
In Ilias Zouros’ debut as a Zalgiris coach in the Euroleague Top 16 game in Valencia, the Greek had an enigmatical piece of paper, at which he was peeking regularly throughout the match. A couple days later the media in Lithuania started trumpeting that the substitutions were predetermined even before the game, by none other than Mr. Romanov himself. Therefore, it’s no coincidence that in the game against Olympiacos, as crazy as it might sound, all twelve Zalgiris players had checked into the game already after the first eight minutes of play in the first quarter.
It’s still unclear how this story is going to end or if it ever will, but if things keep on going this way, it’s safe to say that Zalgiris is on a very dodgy path. It took a long while and a new toy – Zalgiris – before Vladimir Romanov decided to leave the things to the coach in Scottish football club Edinburgh Hearts. Is it going to take much longer for the rich businessman to find another pray? Only time will tell.
