“Brose bamberg must return to the city”
When johan roijakkers buries his new team in full today for the official start of training in strullendorf, it can already be chalked up as a small success this year. The organizational effort to bring the players from abroad to bamberg was rough, but worth it for now. All tests to date – players, coaches and support staff have been tested several times for the coronavirus – have been negative.
On sunday michele vitali, tyler larson& co. Getting to know her new adopted home town for the first time on a guided tour of the city. While the team will be sweating it out in the hall until the start of the season in october, the preparation time for the brose managers around new managing director philipp galewski (33) will be no less strenuous.
A radical change in personnel in the midst of the corona era: there are certainly quieter times to join a professional team as a managing director. Was it the most stressful summer of your professional life?
No. In bayreuth, it was more stressful for me because the organization was on a completely different level back then. At medi bayreuth I had to act more in the operational business, here in bamberg they have a functioning business with employees who are partly very young but nevertheless experienced and know exactly what they have to do. It was only necessary to have someone who makes decisions – that’s what I do as the managing director. What takes a bit of the fun out of it for all of us is actually corona. We have a team that has a lot of ideas, but unfortunately we can implement few or none of them. That is a pity.
Where do you currently see the greatest difficulties for the association as a result of the pandemic??
Uncertainty is the difficult. Politically, the situation is changing so fast, it’s hard to grasp at the moment. We as an organization are currently thinking in terms of weeks. Even getting our players to germany was already a challenge. I’m not even talking about the players’ families, who were only allowed to come along occasionally.
Now that we have solved this problem, we have to make sure that the hygiene regulations at our training center in strullendorf are complied with so that training operations can continue on 24 hours a day. August can start. And then comes the next step: what about our first home games?? We can only think about this at the beginning of september, because the corona events change daily – at the moment unfortunately to the negative.
We do not print ourselves before the decision, but casually said: if markus soder says tomorrow, this year there are no more rough events, then I do not need to develop a hygiene concept with spectators for the time being. Because for such a concept one must spend fast a rough funfstelligen amount.
Ministerprasident soder’s recent statements did not give the german soccer league (DFL) much hope for games with spectators at the start of the season. How did you interpret these statements and what can be deduced from them for basketball??
That was a bit humbling. The fubballers have put a lot of energy and work into their concepts, which are very conclusive. Such sweeping statements pull one then nevertheless somewhat down. We had already the hope to be able to play in october with spectators – of course not in front of full hats. We have made a conservative calculation with 2000 spectators and a model with about 3000. With the latter we could cover almost all sponsors and season ticket holders. The minimum distance of 1,50 meters could be kept without any problems.
Is it possible to make a black zero with 2000 spectators per home game in the brose arena??
As a matter of principle, it must always be our goal to finish a season without a loss. With this planning we will just about reach zero. If we make a loss, it is definitely due to the pandemic and the resulting lack of spectators and limited sales opportunities. However, as things stand at the moment, we will be able to close the past fiscal year on a positive note. This way we build up an equity cushion, so that we could live with a small loss.
Ware a complete season with ghost games for brose bamberg and the other clubs in the BBL presentable?
Ghost games were a fiasco for us. We have also not developed a scenario with exclusively ghost games, as this is simply not feasible for us. At smaller BBL venues, spectator revenue is 50 percent of the budget, at ours it’s about 30 percent. I think that hardly any club could manage a whole season without spectators. Therefore, I do not believe that a normal BBL round would take place under these circumstances. This was not going to work.
Is it conceivable to play ghost games in a cheaper venue than the brose arena, for example in strullendorf??
A nice thought. But if there are games, they will of course be broadcast on magentasport. This example alone shows that a certain infrastructure must be in place. This is not given in our training hall in strullendorf. So in bamberg this only works in the brose arena.
If no or only a few spectators are admitted to the home games: how do you manage to integrate the fans anyway?? In the NBA, a few hundred spectators can participate in the game via a webcam on an LED wall in the hall …
What the NBA is doing is a very nice, but also a very expensive solution. I don’t think it is realistic and financially feasible for us. But there are different ideas, like for example in fubball with "cardboard comrades" to sit down, to create a certain connection and to brighten up the dreary picture a little bit. Our focus is currently on bringing the fans and the new players together.
Classical measures for me would be an open player presentation on the maxplatz and an open training session – but this falls flat. That’s why we are currently holding alternative video meetings with our newcomers, which are also being well received. We are currently planning to broadcast a training session or at least one of the planned test matches on the internet.
Corona and possible ghost games aside: the majority of bamberg fans have taken the personnel change in recent weeks very positively. This includes the return of wolfgang heyder after six years. What do you expect from your new youth coordinator in the next few years??
Wolfgang heyder is insanely well networked. He simply has this intrinsic motivation to get involved in the youth sector. He wants the best for the young talent. And having a man like that in that position just makes you feel good. Especially since we have noticed in all languages that we are on a wave long. I expect that everything in the junior area will first be put on the test stand. And that there is a clear direction in general, i.E. That everyone pulls together again. There has to be much more communication, also with the cooperating clubs.
We actually have a good situation in bamberg: a great boarding school with the aufseesianum, which is unfortunately half empty at the moment. We need more quality and quantity. But the potential is there, because we have a lot of clubs in the area and a basketball-enthusiastic environment. I hope that now structures will be created to bring the youth program forward in the medium term.
And what can we expect from bamberg’s talent in the short term??
We won’t have a bamberger player getting bundesliga minutes in the next year or two. We have to say goodbye to this idea. For example, we recently made two players with bamberg roots a concrete offer, but they turned us down because they obviously had other financial ideas. Bamberg players, who are part of our youth program, must also prove themselves and the athletic performance must match the salary. Money does not grow on trees in our region.
How far advanced are the plans with the new cooperation partner BBC coburg??
The cooperation with BBC coburg is slowly being filled with life. We will lend players to coburg who need to develop there and gain experience at trial level and take on responsibility. We currently have up to four players earmarked for cooperation: elias baggette, moritz plescher, possibly mateo seric for individual games and a fourth with whom we are still in contract negotiations.
The main advantage for us is that there is a lot of "bamberg" in the coburg organization is available. BBC will also train once or twice a week in strullendorf, right under the nose of our head coach, who will regularly exchange ideas with coburg coach valentino lott.
Besides the parquet, the french quota at brose bamberg has risen sharply with heyder, you as a native of ansbach, and wilfried kamper, chairman of the bamberg business club, as a new member of the supervisory board. A new, old bamberger basketball romance?
Wilfried kamper on the supervisory board is a clear signal: we want to get back into the city more. The euroleague times made possible by our main sponsor were great. Now i can say it: even i, as a person from bavaria, liked to watch games in bamberg, because there were simply sensational players there. But these times are over now and we must not mourn them any longer.
For me it is time that brose bamberg comes back more to the city. I want the term "freak city" don’t stress too much, but it has to be like it was in the past, the team has to be close and tangible. In this way, we are also trying to get the bamberg companies more involved again. This rough and well-functioning sponsor network, which once existed and is no longer there at the moment, is to grow again.
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