Current coach of the US Avignon Pontet Basket in National 1 and elected coach of the year last season in the United Kingdom, Vincent Lavandier comes back for Sportiw on how the recruitment is managed nowadays and how Sportiw helps him in his scouting.
Hello Vincent, can you briefly introduce yourself ?
My name is Vincent Lavandier and I am currently in my 30th year of coaching. I have coached in training centers but also as an assistant coach in Pro A, head coach in Pro B and N1 and more recently I was coach in the UK in the BBL championship.
Now, I am coach of the US Avignon Pontet in National 1.
You have been elected coach of the year 2020 in BBL, what are the differences between the French and the British basketball?
There are many differences between France and Great Britain!
The main difference is the funding. In Great Britain, there is really little help from the authorities, the clubs have to pay their infrastructures.
The lower divisions are really neglected and the first division is the only championship where there is some money.
For example, if you want to go and play basketball with your friends, you have to pay by the hour, and this is also the case for the professional clubs. Basketball is the 2nd most popular team sport in the United Kingdom. Their potential is very important.
And I take my hat off to the will of the British players, which is extraordinary!
They have a spirit of freshness and competitiveness to the extreme!
What do you think about the way recruitment is managed in France, and especially in the national championships?
In France, you have to go through an agent who has a FFBB license. The recruiting has to be managed by French agents and it sometimes takes time. I am not saying that this is restrictive. But in many foreign leagues, we do not have this problem, and we can open more easily to new markets and new players.
What does Sportiw bring to the recruitment ?
Well, thanks to Sportiw, we have the possibility to have access to a multitude of players, in France but also internationally. The platform allows us to have a different vision but also an opening on foreign agents, so obviously it opens greater opportunities.
The fact of being able to have a visibility on players who are not necessarily presented in France is a very appreciable element! But I can also have an access to the profile of the players much more quickly, rather than having to go and pick up all their different information on a multitude of different site.
On Sportiw, everything is gathered on the same platform and you can directly chat with the community.
What else does Sportiw brings you?
Sportiw also allows me to sort the different players according to my needs! Sorting to find the right profile which corresponds to my expectations, making a research and thus establishing a list of potential players, according to the wills of construction of the team.
To summarize, Sportiw facilitates a lot our daily life in our periods of recruitment and I think that in the long term it will develop towards the various European levels!
If you had to talk about Sportiw to people who are still hesitating to register, what would you tell them?
First of all, we have to admit that with Sportiw we have an accessibility, a visibility and a rapidity as for the access to the information, which allows to facilitate our work when we scout. In a world where everything goes very fast thanks to Internet, the advantage of having a platform like Sportiw is great, it allows us to go faster!
Also, as I said before, I would say that Sportiw allows this opening on Europe and on the world more easily.
You should not believe that Sportiw wants to interfere in the work of each other, it is simply a platform that connects the different actors of the sports world!
We really have to make people understand that Sportiw is something very positive that will help all the actors of the orange ball world and not a big shark that comes to eat everyone!
A word to conclude?
To try it is to adopt it!
A big thank you to Vincent Lavandier for his availability and his answers!