Inside the Serbian Basketball Federation

Recently our Governing Body England Basketball ran an educational visits for Coaches to go to European Powerhouse Serbia to find out about their system and how it is different from various other countries.
England Basketball

One of the coaches and a friend of mine Alan Keane, England U16 Assistant Coach provided this notes:

Serbia Trip 2013

Meeting with Dejan Mijatovic of the Serbian Basketball Federation
Notes;

• Serbia has 700 players in National Teams (NT) system aged from 1993-1999 born

• Year Round Programme inclusive of regional development areas

• 8 regions underneath national development programme. National tournament in May between 8 regions (100 players are watched) per age group (under 12, under 13, under 14). The Serbian Federation and Dejan travel each month to work on fundamental skills for each age group in each region.

• These sessions are only 2 hours per day (compared to our RPC of 6 hours per day). This is because all of the Serbian Club Coaches watch these sessions and maintain the development work when they return to the clubs.

• Only individual focus throughout these sessions. They will progress to no more than 3 vs. 3

• All individual focus

• All buy in from clubs as each individual is 'systems priority' and not clubs priority

• Any coaches not buying in, simply federation work with that club directly to bypass the coach.

• 2007 Serbian junior teams won 5 gold medals, not happy as there were no players for senior national team. Therefore they developed system again and changed some processes

• Not selecting players for now to win, select for the future to develop and play on senior national team. This is how they judge success.

• 22 players (each age group) researched by government each year to see who has best developmental potential (bone density, speed ect) results compared for next year

• All players kept on file

• 6 ages per year

• 1st Assistant Coach works with Tactics when involved in NT system

• 2nd Assistant working with scouting and individual development

• Characteristic of NT coaches;

-First must be teacher

-Must control egos from all clubs

-They choose NT Coaches on how they develop players and specific positional coaches

-Club coaches who develop their players and a higher number of players will be included in national system

I feel that this could be useful for various American Coaches to see how a top level European Country operates and give you something to compare with your own National Programme.