On Chad’s basketball courts, all outdoors, you can now find Alimerka Oviedo Baloncesto jerseys and training clothes. This has been the case since the club, represented by Héctor Galán, its general director, accepted the invitation of Diego Canga, a senior official of the European Union and candidate of the PP to preside over Asturias, to visit the Central African country and learn how basketball works there.
Galán spent five days in the capital of Chad, N’Djamena, and thus was able to see first-hand what facilities they have, what their competition systems are like and how they train. “I found a way of working that we had here years ago, the facilities are all outdoors and consist of just two baskets,” explains Galán. The country’s basketball federation is the one that organizes the competition: “They do it altruistically, they try to organize basketball a bit, there is a national league, teams from lower categories, but it is difficult for them to find people to play,” adds the general director from the Asturian club.
In the training sessions they organized during those days, Galán recounts that it was all a bit improvised: “One day you find yourself with seven national team players and the next day with one; they are boys and girls with physiques that attract attention.” In his opinion, “in technical and tactical aspects they have a lot left, in training they do things that you no longer see in Spain and that is where I think they can be helped, collaborating to implement a more advanced and current methodology”. Chad’s is not by far one of the most powerful structures in African basketball, where countries like Senegal or Congo stand out, but even so in lower category teams they have already achieved some commendable results. One of the pending projects to continue evolving is the construction of a covered pavilion, for which, says Galán, “they already have a site selected.” Among the players he was able to see, the general director of the OCB assures that “some boys and girls attract attention” and he can already think of some initiatives to collaborate: “Let’s see if we can do something together, beyond sporting interest, such as invite players to the campus that we have in summer, but we have to see how it materializes”.
The gestation of this trip was a long one and was sponsored by Diego Canga, who played basketball at the Colegio San Ignacio, where he met the president of Alimerka Oviedo, Fernando Villabella. Canga, an OCB subscriber, has a long relationship with Chad, which comes from his parents, who lived there. “Canga, his wife and a group of friends collaborate with young people from the country, helping them to study Medicine and Nursing on the condition that when they finish they stay in Chad. Last March the idea of opening the sports issue through of the OCB and the trip took place this November”, explains Galán. One of the activities with which they closed the meeting was a match in which Galán and Canga himself played, as well as Patricio Ortiz, also an EU official, and his son Padi, who acted as Galán’s guide throughout the trip: “We ended up playing a party with kids from a school on the outskirts and we talked in class, it was a great experience.”
Trifón Poch: “The goal will come”
The Alimerka Oviedo coach, Trifón Poch, is satisfied with the work of his team, even though he only had six chances to train with the entire squad, unlike his rivals, who have been training and competing together for a long time: “The quality of the training since everyone has been very good, it has been even more noticeable due to the fact that the victories have taken a weight off our shoulders”. What he liked least is not being able to train his team today before the team leaves on a trip to Almansa (Albacete): “Tomorrow (for today) due to the training conditions we have here in Oviedo, I do not put the adjective, We cannot train before leaving; we have tried to find an alternative track on the way, but we have not succeeded and in principle we do not have training tomorrow, there has only been today’s session (for yesterday) to prepare for the game, but we are more or less like that minus all the teams that we have to travel”. As for the mistake of his players in the shot from three, Poch is sure that it will be reversed: “The goal will come.”
