Andrey Vedishchev: “My goal is to give young players a chance on time”

Here is the YouTube video. And we present you the full translation.

Lokomotiv-Kuban is a very big system, so whether you want it or not, you have to remain the president.

At a professional level, experience and understanding are very important for a coach. There are no standards here. Working as a head coach, you need to devote almost all your time to the team and analyzing training, preparing for games. You simply do not have an extra minute, I have to switch from the position of a coach to the position of president and back in a moment. Of course, it’s not easy. I feel that I am a little overwhelmed, but I cope.

I am grateful to my coaching staff. They help me a lot, adapt me, try to help me get faster through tactical schemes. Tactics is the most difficult thing. You have to stop watching games the way the president does. From now, you need to catch all the tactical shifts, movements, who is where. There is a lot of details where you turn on your brain 100%. You think, analyze. And you need to do it very quickly. I have a lot of room to improve in this regard.

There was plenty of analysis. Analysis of games, psychology, relationships within the club and the team. The decision took about two or three weeks, maybe a month. I saw that we always lack something. In 2022/23, we played in the final, a year later – in the 7th game of the semi-finals. In my opinion, we had chances both times, but certain thing did not allow us to take a step. I saw what prevents us from moving forward.

Lokomotiv today will have a different policy, a different vision of the game and development. I have young guys playing who, I think, would not have gotten this chance under a foreign coach. My goal is to give them a chance on time. If you do this, their progress goes much faster than under previous coaches at my club.

I really like that I am a starting, promising coach. This is a very interesting experience, but there are important matches with big teams ahead and there will be a slightly different psychology, different emotions, for me this is the next stage of my development.

Of course, I will quit coaching if I see that I am not coping and I do not have enough knowledge or experience to achieve a needed result. I will make this decision and will not explain that we will play something next season. This decision will be made as soon as I feel that it needs to be made.

The first one to congratulate me was Saša Obradović, the coach of Monaco. He said that he believes in me, gave me words of support.

Sergey Kushchenko, Ilona Korstin congratulated me, but added the same phrase: “Why do you need this?” So, I had to explain why and for what.

Andrey Kirilenko also congratulated me. Taking this opportunity, I congratulate him on his re-election as the President of the Russian Basketball Federation. I wish him and all of us together success and development. Together, we will make our game truly interesting and better.

I have definitely implemented some innovations. In relationships, psychology, discipline. We have a difficult schedule because of travel. We leave a little earlier, we are on the road more, so we need more time to recover. We have to overcome all these difficulties, but they also bring the team closer.

We pay more attention to the movement of the ball, team play, defense, which is very important in our case. We discuss a lot how we will defend, how we will not let the opponents play the basketball they want.

Balanced time on the court for all 12 players is one of the main tasks that I would like to solve as a coach.

We also have a very talented doctor on the team. He came to me at the pre-season training camp and said that he would like to introduce meditation into the pre-match system. I supported this idea, so now we have mental practice before each game.

The team is lying down, there is music, our coach walks and says the certain text. The session lasts about 20-30 minutes. The main goal is to switch off thoughts, relieve tension. These things are the main goal of such practices. Everyone likes it. I think we are on the right track, but this needs to be done constantly. It will be clear what we are ready for closer to the New Year.

Božidar Maljković and Georgios Bartzokas are the top coaches who worked at Lokomotiv in my opinion. Yevgeny Pashutin, Sergey Bazarevich are good within our school.

Maljković is a unique coach who won the Champions League with four different teams. Of course, learned some things from them, how they influence the team. But as a president, you are not inside. As I said, you see everything differently when you are a coach. At each training session, you see how everyone is prepared, in what mood. Everyone is human and you need to feel who can go out at the moment and make a result.

First place. Only first place, otherwise it will not be the result that President Vedishchev demands.
Of course, there are always some subjective and objective factors. If I understand that we did not win because of objective factors, then it will be acceptable. I would like to see that within 2-3 years we will build a team that can be a champion.