Vairo, facing an exceptional plan
The president of the FUBB spoke at length with Tenfield.com about his career, about the new League, about the federation’s strategic plan and about the future of Uruguayan basketball.
The reflective gesture is a faithful reflection of a composing character and a pragmatic mentality: those of Vairo, who will command changes that could be essential for national basketball.
Pablo Cohen
November 11, 2021
There is a 14-year-old boy on the court. Despite his fairly conventional height, he plays power forward. Basketball, for him, is an overflowing emotion, the materialization of a dream. And he practices it with friends, his teammates in the minors in Welcome. But today is a very special day: his greatest idol is watching him on the platform.
“He only sat, but the truth is that I was moved by his very presence. I felt like I had to break it. ” The idol is called Óscar Moglia, and he continues to be one of the greatest sacred monsters in the history of River Plate basketball. And that boy today is 64 years old, from 2012 to 2016 he was president of the League and, since then, he has served as president of the Uruguayan Basketball Federation: the years go by but, for Ricardo Vairo, the passion remains.
“Welcome will always be a feeling, although as president I abstract from being partial,” he says in dialogue with Tenfield.com. And he adds: “Basketball gives me a feeling very different from football, because it allows one to enjoy that sense of belonging so particular that there is with respect to a club in which they have lived a good part of their days, and in which they meet all the people. Furthermore, ours is an environment in which we discuss everything, but in which, deep down, we have a good relationship because we are not here out of interest, but out of love for a sport that is also passion ”.
During the interview with Vairo, this will be the tone that will cover the talk: that of the enchantment that, those of us who adore basketball, still continue to feel. An enchantment that is particularly timely today, when Ricardo, as president of the FUBB, has been in charge of making public a strategic plan that, as part of FIBA PLUS, will allow Uruguay – selected by that program – to reach infrequent horizons of professionalization and transparency.
“Large multinational companies work with planning of this type, but in sport at the federation level it is more difficult to develop it. What the program will make possible will be to start from a mission, determine what the federation exists for and where we are going, and, once that is defined and we are clear about our values, move to the operational level, which has to do with definition of goals and specific objectives that go until the year 2023, when our mandate ends ”, explains Vairo. And he concludes: “This will allow the generation of a single culture in which the values, deadlines and objectives are clear, and in which there is a greater collective spirit and a very clear roadmap that allows knowing what part each actor has to put. to achieve these goals. If we fulfill them, basketball will all progress, it will become an even more popular sport, we will promote more and better basketball in all corners of the country, and we will have goals that are ambitious in quantity and quality, but also very specific budgets and managers. to develop the program ”.
The plan is public and worthwhile as it is written with a healthy level of thought and planning, and highlights such essential values as legacy, team, respect, integrity and fair play. Which, in Vairo’s opinion, will have a positive effect on a team that will work in a more systematic way, and that has based those goals on the hiring of Rubén Magnano, no longer as a coach but as the boss of all the national teams, because “he has a Curriculum like few others in the world and because, with his talent and experience, he is able to widely deploy his leadership ”.
With the Training Center as a base to generate a place of belonging so that the players feel comfortable and can fraternize with the boys of the training divisions, and with the FIBA provision according to which the World Cup qualifiers have entire keys that are played in each country, Vairo believes that the chemistry between the celestial and, above all, between athletes and fans, will grow exponentially. “There is a united team, Rubén will teach at all levels and, although there are players whose teams will not yield in some instances, such as Granger, Bruno Fitipaldo will participate in all the qualifying rounds and, beyond the will of the clubs , the disposition of the basketball players is total ”, he highlights.
But can we see a future in which local clubs see limited the possibility of hiring stars, so that the competition is more even, as it happens in the NBA? “I do not rule. We are still in a transition towards greater professionalization and we have improved our infrastructure, although we still have a long way to go. Beyond the fact that here the clubs are not franchises, the biggest difference between our basketball, which is deficit and is based on patrons who put money in, and the American one, is that the NBA is a business. Therefore, the decisions are based on what is best for that business to prosper ”, he emphasizes.
Before finishing, the former president of Welcome will have time to illustrate how the reality of the pandemic has made it possible to relax the FUBB requirements for the League dispute, to the point that now the antigen tests will have another role and the teams will they will face in all the fields, diminishing the extra-sports advantages that the previous regime – and of emergency – supposed.
We return, when night falls, to that child whom Moglia saw playing, the same one who many years later continues to idolize Óscar as much as Emanuel Ginobili and Michael Jordan. “Do you know what happens? -He says-. That a sport is professional does not mean that it does not involve the heart, because basketball is based, perhaps like no other, on love. Its main barrier, but also its main driver, is emotion. And my main responsibility as president is to manage it ”.
Ricardo Vairo Zugnoni, gentlemen: the same against Moglia as against the turbulent Uruguay of the year 2021.
We wish to thank the author of this write-up for this remarkable material
Vairo, facing an exceptional plan