This is how Schweinsteiger helped Ludwigsburg’s top players get a job
As of 3:08 p.m
Yorman Polas Bartolo (left) was the best Ludwigsburg pitcher with 24 points in the first play-off game on Tuesday evening against EWE Baskets Oldenburg
Source: pa/Eibner-Pressefoto/Fabian Steffen
Yorman Polas Bartolo is fighting with Ludwigsburg for a place in the play-off semi-finals of the basketball Bundesliga. The start of the Cuban in Germany ten years ago was extremely difficult. Also thanks to the help of Bastian Schweinsteiger, Polas Bartolo gained a foothold.
AWhen basketball player Yorman Polas Bartolo was looking for a job, he turned to Bayern stars Manuel Neuer and Bastian Schweinsteiger. In 2012, Polas’ then wife Amelie worked as a waitress in Munich’s celebrity bar “Schumann’s”. There was a regular guest. “So she asked him if he could arrange a trial session with the Bayern basketball team for me,” says 37-year-old Polas Bartolo, who had just moved from Cuba to Germany at the time. Through Schweinsteiger, Neuer made contact with Bayern basketball player Steffen Hamann, who put in a good word for Polas.
Shortly thereafter, the native Cuban was on the floor with Bayern. It wasn’t enough for the first team at the time, he trained with the second for two months. “Unfortunately, I didn’t get my chance,” he says, “then I was gone again.”
Bastian Schweinsteiger (left) and former Bayern basketball player Steffen Hamann have been friends for years
Those: pa/Christina Pahnke/sampics
Polas Bartolo went his own way and worked his way up: in 2013 he switched from the fourth-class Munich Baskets to the second division in Crailsheim and Gießen, with whom he was promoted to the Bundesliga (BBL). Then Bonn first fetched him before he went to Ludwigsburg via Frankfurt. It helped that he has had a German passport since September 2015. That makes him all the more attractive for BBL clubs because he doesn’t occupy a foreigner’s place in the squad.
Ludwigsburg with a good chance of reaching the semi-finals
In the “giants” Polas is a regular player on the wing. Games against Bayern appeal to him all the more: “I give my all against every opponent. But of course it’s something special with Bayern because they didn’t take me back then. I still want to show them what I can do.”
Ludwigsburg went into the play-offs in fifth place, opponents in the quarter-finals (mode: best of five) is Oldenburg. The team won the first duel on Tuesday evening at the EWE Baskets with 90:80 (56:45). The second game will take place again in Oldenburg on Thursday (3 p.m., Magentasport). Polas believes in the chance to go far: “We already look very good in certain areas. If we show that for 40 minutes, we’ll be a real problem for any opponent.”
This also applies to the Cuban: his strength is defence. With his long arms he takes away any opponent’s space to throw, on fast feet he blocks their way. He has already been voted best BBL defender three times. Because of his athletics, he was nicknamed “El Ciclón” (the hurricane) in Cuba. Polas: “My teammates gave it to me because I was just attacking and defending everywhere on the field.”
