Today, we got the news from Greece that Jeremiah Massey will get a Macedonian passport. This will help Aris to sign another US born player in the upcoming days.
In fact, Massey was supposed to get a Slovakian passport, but it has been announced today that he will finally not get it but it will be a Macdonian one. He can then team up with Mike Wilkinson in the Macedonian National team, Wilkinson who played for Aris last season. However, the explication in the news release is somehow interesting. We got the translation of that news from Greece too and here is what it says.
Originally, Massey was supposed to receive a Slovakian passport, yet the slow bureaucracy was limiting the potential of this option and thus, Aris’ board of directors targeted Macedonia as the next case
This sounds quite funny to me as the reason to get a passport is not anymore the fact of having a cousin whose grandmother came from that country, but it is now the speed of the bureaucracy that decides the choices of the new homecountry of professional basketball players.
Greece is known for being very “creative” in their process of “finding” new players. Who does not remember Radoslav Makris or Alexis Amanatidis? You don’t know them? Maybe the names of Nesterovic or Savrasenko ring a bell. And also somebody called Jake Tsakilidis has not his origins somewhere around Olympia but comes originally out of Georgia and was born as Tsakalov (probably).
However, here we have a little quiz for the new Macedonian citizen. You find below the two national anthems of Macedonia and Slovakia. Please chose the correct one and you have to learn it by heart before the end of the year.
And some other thought, what is the role of Gordon Herbert in all these new passports? He was already present with Pau-Orthez when they signed the newly Georgian passport player Melvin Sanders. He was also already coach of the Georgian national team that features proud citizens like Tyrone Ellis. And now, Herbert is coach at Aris and their supposed best player finally gets the important passport.
It’s nice to have a few black guys on Eastern European National teams.. They bring authencity to the style of play hehe..
This is an interesting development … Surely Greeks have been doing this a lot (I remember Dragan Tarlac and Milan Tomic playing as greeks for olympiacos in the 90s) and even before that in football (Juan Raom Rocha, an argentinian footballer, playing for panathinaikos in the 80s).. However, I ‘m not sure how russian JR Holden really is
The case of Massey is also more interesting, since Greece has a long-lasting political debate with FYROM, or Former Yugo Republic of Macedonia as it’s officially named, and especially people from the north of Greece (capital being salonica, where Aris comes from) are emotionally charged and dislike anything ‘Macedonian’ … In fact, they would not like this article for the mere fact it calls someone a ‘macedonian’ . They believe that country should be called ‘Skopje’.
I am greek, but I don’t want to take part in this debate right here, since it’s too complicated for this b-ball blog, there are truths in both sides of the argument – I ‘m just pointing out an interesting twist of the story. I ‘m sure lots of Aris fans wont like this development that much, even if it helps their team.
PS – the whole thing is ridiculous though, they should either ban this sort of things, or allow an infinite number of foreigners, has Massey ever been in Slovakia, or ‘Macedonia’ before in his life? How can he claim a passport from those countries… Basketball players should be treated like the rest of us in terms of passports or any other civil rights, it’s just ridiculous for them to get nationalities like it’s something you buy from a shop ..
I don’t think Aris fans will like this.
They will LOVE it!
Do you remember under which nationality was Stik playing for Aris? Why, the same one as Massey will be from now on…
On the name now, yes many Greeks won’t be happy. But our friends from Northern Greece should look to solve their everyday lives issues first instead of consuming their time with nonsense.
Tsakalides and Savrasenko both have Greek roots and Tsakalides’ Russian name was Ledkov and not Tsakalov.
Tsakalov by the way is one of the three guys who started the Greek fight for independence in the 18th century…
All Greeks (and generally anyone non-soviet) had to change his name in the Soviet era, thus the different Russian and Greek names…
On a general note developed European (and not only, Israel for example) nations recognizing and giving privileges to people who have roots of that nations and were not so privileged for a big part of their life is a wonderful fact.
It is just a shame to consider citizenship …… as a choice between going to McDo or to KFC, trying to find where you get your junk-food faster.
Eric please… everyone knows that KFC serves faster!
This should really be a test of how popular this site is…if indeed it is, you are going to get a lot of angry mail from Aris fans and northern Greeks in general, nobody is calling FYROM “Macedonia” here, everyone is using “Skopia” instead to name the country.
Anyway, back to basketball, the best ever player to get a different nationality passport in order to play in the Greek league was by far Peja Stojakovic. There was even talk to call him in the Greek national team in the ’90s. His offseason home is still in my hometown of Thessaloniki, he married a local girl too and he owns a nice and popular bistrot by the seaside.
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