Samson Arakelyan: «Our Current Youth Project is Designed for 5-10 Years»

The General Director of Astana, Samson Arakelyan, gave an interview to Indira Bektenova for the Qazsport channel.

Samson Gevorgovich talked about the direction the club is heading, including the marketing aspect and the strategy for developing young Kazakh basketball players.

– You started working as the General Director of PBC Astana last year. Can we already summarize the work done?

– I wouldn't like to draw conclusions because, of course, it's a long-term process designed for 5-10 years. Radical changes were necessary both in terms of the club's philosophy and strategy and from a marketing perspective. We must understand that the club will grow and require additional financial capabilities, and we need to learn how to generate income.

The long-term foundation is undoubtedly the development of our people, not only in management but, most importantly, in sports personnel. Some steps were already taken under the previous leader: a team based on the Academy was created that played in the Premier League. However, we realized that we needed to address this matter more seriously. Therefore, we established the farm team, where some of Kazakhstan's most promising young talents, aged 18 to 23, play.

We opened a new hall for the Astana Academy on the right bank, and the number of participants tripled. It's already more than three hundred young players, and we see that the demand is growing. This is also an excellent commercial story for us. Now that we have the talent pool and can find boys aged 15-16 with a height of 2 meters and above, we understand that all we need to do is create the best conditions for developing our youth to nurture new basketball stars.

We aim to ensure that the club becomes a place with conditions comparable to those in Europe or the United States. In these circumstances, we want to see what Kazakhstani basketball is capable of to maximize our potential. From a marketing perspective, we understood that the state budget is not infinite, and we needed to turn Astana into a product that would be highly in demand. I hope the club will soon be associated with the city and Kazakhstani basketball.

We worked with a designer for about a month to give the club an image, a logo that would be recognized at a glance in the future. I think we succeeded in that. The letter 'A,' the upward movement, the Kazakh ornament, and the Samruk bird are combined into something very simple and recognizable. I'm very pleased that our sponsors trusted my vision and that I was able to launch all of this just two months after starting to work.

– The new season starts in October. How is the preparation going?

–We started preparing for the new season without completing the previous one. During the WASL, we began looking for players we would like to continue working with. That's how it turned out with Carvel Anderson. We really liked him in Dubai, and we immediately offered him a job for the next season.

The coaching staff and I reviewed hundreds of players throughout these two summer months, even during vacation. At the moment, I can say that the main team's roster is almost complete.
This team will become much stronger, I believe, due to two factors: quality foreign players of a different level and the previous season in which our Kazakhstani players received record game time and extensive practice. The result was a very decent performance in the West Asian Super League, where we finished third. Still, we were just a step away from the final and, in my opinion, were worthy of silver since we defeated the team from Kuwait, which took second place. Luck was just a little short, but the level of our leading team players has grown significantly.

I think we can be competitive, and our minimum goal is to fight for the playoffs in the VTB United League.

Our next step was also positively received, although it slightly shocked the basketball community. For all these 11-12 years, the main 'Astana' team was practically an unconditional leader in the National League; we easily defeated anyone. However, on the other hand, I saw this as an incorrect story from the perspective of our image as the richest club.

Moreover, I understood that the first-team players were already at a different level and could only develop internationally. At the same time, young players needed more playing time.

We negotiated with the federation and agreed that the main 'Astana' team would only play in international tournaments. Instead, we propose the Astana Academy team, mainly consisting of our young talents.

For them, it will be an excellent level, a great motivation to win. Moreover, I think it will be much more enjoyable for fans to watch how the young team fights rather than seeing the main team win by a margin of 30-40 points.

I am really looking forward to the start of the season. We are doing everything to ensure the teams are in their best shape. The training camp in Serbia also indicates that we choose the best countries for preparing our local talents.