Clear case of stupid. The Swedish goalkeeper Peter Johannesson was at the TV interview when his teammates celebrated one of the most beautiful moments of the past 15 months. In the semi-finals of the DHB Cup, TBV Lemgo was allowed to play in front of some of its fans for the first time during the pandemic, so things were done in front of 1,600 spectators that would not have been fun in the end: everyone sit down, everyone gets up, humbatätärä. Johannesson looked back at his jumping teammates in the Hamburg arena a few times, then dutifully stated into the Sky microphone: “We could only win.”
The former national player Stefan Kretzschmar was later to say about this semi-final against THW Kiel that he didn’t know “when I last saw a handball game like this”. This is certainly “one of the greatest handball miracles that we have seen in the last few months”. The team from Lemgo, the German champions from 1997 and 2003, had lost seven goals at half-time – against a team like the record champions from Kiel that is usually a sign that such a game will no longer end well becomes. At worst, with an embarrassment.
For Kiel it is the second serious disappointment of the past few weeks
But the TBV managed to wrest the game from the favored Kielers. In the first half, Kiel played as we know it, in the 36th minute THW was still leading 21:14, followed by 24 insane minutes. Lemgo caught up gate by gate, in the 56th minute the TBV took the lead for the first time, 28:27. Nine seconds before the end, the famous keeper Johannesson steered the last throw from Kiel’s back space thrower Harald Reinkind to the crossbar. He “just reacted,” said the goalkeeper, “you want to keep a shot like that when you train seven or eight times a week”. When he had finished his interview, the next reward followed, Johannesson was allowed to go back to his colleagues.
Other participants seemed rather stunned after the 29:28, such as Lemgos Jonathan Carlsbogard, who said he had “no idea what happened here”. Kiel’s Domagoj Duvnjak also confessed: “I’m shocked.” And TBV coach Florian Kehrmann proudly reported: “For everyone in handball Germany we were already dead at halftime.” During the break, he told his players “that they should keep showing their hearts, no matter how the game ends”. However, Kehrmann did not claim the coaching trick of the year, he remained honest: “It only works in one out of ten cases.”
For THW Kiel, it is the second serious disappointment of the late phase of the Corona season. The record champions felt well prepared for the title decisions in May and June, but had to write off their title defense in the Champions League (out against Paris Saint-Germain) just as early as the belatedly awarded cup title from 2020. The final will be on Friday evening opposite the TBV Lemgo and MT Melsungen. The biggest surprise was that the cup winner will not be named THW Kiel.
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