CSKA Moscow and the 89-67 Scoreline: When a Friendly Gets Read as a Manifesto

There is an image I have kept in my head for years: Faker sitting motionless on his chair after the 0-3 loss in the 2026 LCK Summer final, the stage lights still blazing but nobody looking at him anymore. I was sixteen that year, understood nothing about League of Legends, and understood one thing immediately — the moments that tell the truth about sport are rarely the moments with cheering.

The other night I ran into an image of the same kind, only on a different court. On a stream with a few thousand viewers, CSKA Moscow beat Crvena Zvezda 89-67 at the VTB Super Cup. A twenty-two-point margin. Not a single spectator stood up in the front row, because the front row was empty. The digital scoreboard lit up a number, held it for a few seconds, then went dark.

Days later, Samson Ruzhentsev's interview with MATCH! appeared, and that number was suddenly lifted off the floor to become a much larger statement: CSKA could "look quite decent" in the EuroLeague.

That is the story I want to tell today. Not the story of a great Russian club returning, but the story of a sample size too small being used as the foundation for a belief far too large.

To understand why that remark matters, we need to go back to one specific marker. In March 2026, after the Russia-Ukraine conflict erupted, the EuroLeague and ECA decided to remove Russian clubs from the continental competition. CSKA Moscow — the most decorated club in EuroLeague history — was banned from the very stage it once dominated. Three seasons passed. More than thirteen hundred days.

In parallel, FIBA imposed a similar ban on Russian and Belarusian players, coaches and referees. The entire basketball ecosystem of those two countries was frozen out of FIBA-governed international competition.

Then last October, FIBA lifted the suspension on individuals. Russian and Belarusian players, coaches and referees were allowed back. This is a real milestone, not a rumour, not speculation. It opens a door that had been locked for three and a half years.

But where that door opens, and how far, is another story.

Ruzhentsev, a 25-year-old playing guard and forward for CSKA, told MATCH! that if his team were allowed back, it could look quite decent in the EuroLeague despite the long absence. He cited two games as evidence: a 98-97 win over Dubai in a preseason friendly, and an 89-67 win over Crvena Zvezda at the VTB Super Cup. He also stressed that the VTB United League is one of the three best leagues in Europe, judging by the level of its top four teams.

The problem is this: the remark sounds very confident, but the material supporting it is astonishingly thin. And for someone who makes a living reading sports data, as I do, that is exactly the moment to stop.

Let us start with the two numbers Ruzhentsev used as evidence.

The 98-97 win over Dubai. A one-point margin. In a preseason friendly. That is not evidence of strength; it is evidence that two teams were evenly matched on an evening when neither really needed to win.

The 89-67 win over Crvena Zvezda. Twenty-two points. It sounds far more convincing, and nominally Crvena Zvezda is a genuine EuroLeague club. But the context deserves a careful read: this was a VTB Super Cup game — a preseason warm-up tournament where teams rotate their line-ups, experiment with tactics and, most importantly, where results count toward no standings at all.

In basketball we call this the small-sample trap. You take two observations from a non-competitive setting and extrapolate them into a conclusion about a thirty-four-round season. That is not analysis; it is exaggeration with make-up on.

I have seen this mechanism many times, just in a different sport. In 2026, writing about the World Cup semi-final between France and Belgium, I compared Deschamps's 4-2-3-1 to a "stable meta" — a balanced, low-variance shape, solid in defence and sharp on the counter. Belgium lost 0-1 in a game where they had more possession. If you looked at only that one match and concluded Belgium were weaker than France, you would miss the much larger question: which squad sustained its level across seven games, which squad absorbed injuries, which squad handled a congested calendar.

One game tells you about one night. One season tells you about a system.

The EuroLeague is the most punishing system in European basketball. Thirty-four rounds of round-robin play. Intercontinental flights squeezed between Tuesday and Thursday. Back-to-backs in Kaunas, Istanbul, Athens. Then a best-of-five playoff series where every possession is squeezed by pressure.

Crvena Zvezda can absolutely lose to CSKA by twenty-two points on a September afternoon while testing a second unit and giving young players fourth-quarter minutes. But in March, with both teams chasing a playoff berth, the outcome looks entirely different — not because Crvena Zvezda are better, but because the context has changed. In esports we call this the gap between scrims and official matches. A team can demolish opponents in scrims every day, then walk into a real match and shatter in the thirtieth minute.

Ruzhentsev is not wrong that CSKA have quality. He is 25, at the early edge of his prime window, and what he says reflects the internal belief of a locker room. But internal belief and competitive level are two different things. An optimistic player tells you about morale. He does not tell you about offensive rating, defensive rating, or effective field-goal percentage.

And here is the point I want to underline: across that entire interview, not a single performance metric appears. No scoring average, no shooting percentage, no minutes played, no plus-minus. We have a name, an age, a position — and two friendly scorelines. That is the entire dataset. In other words, the claim about CSKA's EuroLeague level rests on a foundation of two games with no competitive value whatsoever.

Now the second argument: the VTB United League is one of the three best leagues in Europe.

This is what I call a top-heavy argument. Whether it holds depends entirely on what you count. If you count only the four strongest teams — CSKA, UNICS Kazan, Lokomotiv-Kuban, Zenit — then yes, that group has real quality. But the strength of a league is not measured by its peak. It is measured by its depth.

The EuroLeague has eighteen clubs. There, the fourteenth-placed team can still beat the third-placed team on the third-placed team's bad night. What makes the competition brutal is not how good the leader is, but the fact that you never get a night off.

How many teams in the VTB League can genuinely win the title? Four. How many teams are losing to them a surprise? Very few. Concentrating elite talent at the top of the tree does not mean the whole tree is strong. A league judged by four clubs is a league not yet fully judged.

I understand why a player says this. He is defending his league, his colleagues, the place he earns his living. That instinct is natural, and it deserves no scorn. But a natural instinct is not evidence.

There is another dimension the interview does not mention, and it matters more than both friendlies combined: revenue. Three and a half years outside the EuroLeague means CSKA lost broadcast income, home gate revenue from continental fixtures, and sponsorship deals tied to presence on the highest stage. That is the real driver of a club's desire to return — not sporting glory, but cash flow and brand equity. And if CSKA return with a budget eroded by years away, the product on the floor may lag behind the club's own name.

At this point I want to step away from the crowd.

Most commentary on this story will focus on the question: are CSKA good enough to return to the EuroLeague? I think that is the wrong question, and asking the wrong question leads to wrong conclusions.

The right question is: who has the authority to decide the return?

FIBA lifted the ban on individuals — players, coaches, referees. That is an administrative decision. But the EuroLeague is not run by FIBA. The EuroLeague is run by ECA, a joint venture of its own member clubs. The power to admit new teams belongs to those clubs, not to FIBA.

This is the common confusion the interview inadvertently encourages: reading FIBA's decision as a signal that CSKA are about to return to the EuroLeague. Those two things sit on different tracks, running at different speeds, controlled by different governing bodies. Lifting a player ban does not automatically open a door for a club.

I would argue the club track is the hardest one. In recent years, several EuroLeague member clubs have publicly opposed Russian participation. Admitting CSKA is not an administrative decision; it is a political and commercial negotiation between parties with conflicting interests. That kind of decision is not made on a schedule, and nobody — not the club, not FIBA — controls it alone.

Ruzhentsev himself acknowledges this, if indirectly. He says national teams are the next step, but it is not yet known exactly when. That ambiguity is not a minor detail. It is the whole story. We need to distinguish clearly: FIBA's decision on players, the return path of national teams, and the admission of Russian clubs to the EuroLeague are three separate events, decided by three separate mechanisms, on three separate timelines.

Here is the paradox worth naming. If the return depends on a vote by the clubs, then every analysis of CSKA's competitive level — however accurate — becomes a debate about a scenario that may never happen. You are grading a test nobody may ever hold.

And if the return happens in a restricted format — say, no home games, or neutral venues — the question of looking decent changes again. Home advantage in Moscow is part of the equation. Remove it and the equation is different.

It is also worth looking at how the answer was constructed. Ruzhentsev opens with a hesitation — essentially, it is hard to say — then moves to the confident conclusion. In interview craft, that sequence usually appears when the subject touches something sensitive: the first reflex is caution, the second is loyalty to the collective. It makes the answer feel more credible, but emotional credibility is not the same as data credibility.

There is another signal I consider far more important, and it is buried under the CSKA headline.

When FIBA lifted the ban on Russian and Belarusian players, coaches and referees, the door opened for more than one club. It opened an entire labour market. Hundreds of players, dozens of coaches, dozens of referees became eligible to return to the European basketball system. That is a new supply stream flowing into an already fiercely competitive market.

Its impact is quiet. It generates no headlines. But it shifts the balance of an entire market — transfer values, job opportunities, talent distribution. A club in Spain might find a Russian guard at a more reasonable price than before. A club in Germany might sign a Belarusian coach it previously could not approach. That is the real first domino. CSKA is only the third or fourth domino, at the end of the row, and nothing guarantees it falls.

Based on my experience following games across many seasons, I have noticed a recurring rule: statements made during a transition period always need to be read more slowly than usual. When everything is changing, people tend to speak about the future in the present tense — as if what they want is already happening. I saw this in 2026, when traditional sports froze because of the pandemic and esports became the only place where keyboards were still clicking. In that year's "Silent Summer" series, I interviewed Levi — the GAM Esports jungler — and he told me he missed the trembling feeling of team fights in a packed arena. That was a sentence about the present, but really it was a sentence about the belief that things would return. That belief was correct. It is just that its schedule was not his to decide.

CSKA are in a similar position. Their players believe in the return. But they are not the ones who press the button.

A dynasty does not fall with a thunderclap; it falls with a slip in the last minute of stoppage time. And a dynasty trying to rebuild does not rise with a trumpet, but with a friendly scoreline nobody counts on a September afternoon.

I do not blame Ruzhentsev. He is 25, at the peak of his career, and has spent years playing in a system cut off from the rest of Europe. If I were in his position, I would probably want to believe in a brighter outlook too. That belief is human. And sport needs people who dare to believe.

But the story of sport is not told through belief. It is told through results — and real results only begin when the ball goes up in a game that counts, in front of a crowd, with a playoff berth waiting at the other end of the season.

The 89-67 scoreline is still there, on the scoreboard of a tournament nobody tallies. It will stay there. For now, all we have is a 25-year-old, two friendly scorelines, and a door nobody has opened yet.

What is worth thinking about is not whether CSKA are good enough. What is worth thinking about is this: if that door opens one day, will we be brave enough to judge this team by what it shows on the floor — rather than by its past reputation and the memory of a dynasty grown old?