Looking at the Bundesliga handball table has been a monotonous affair at times in recent years. Very often the THW Kiel was at the top, sometimes the SG Flensburg-Handewitt, behind the two northern teams nothing came in terms of points for a long time. In the summer of 2021, for example, when Kiel and Flensburg fought for the championship title up to the last second, they ended the season with 68 points each, ultimately Kiel was a razor-thin ahead. Third place: Magdeburg, 15 points behind.
In this respect, the current tableau is quite attractive for friends of less predictable seasons: It is even extremely wild, not Kiel or Flensburg are in front, but the Rhein-Neckar Löwen, who have recently been in trouble, with 14:0 points. They are followed by Füchse Berlin, after this furious 34:26 victory over Kiel on Sunday, which incidentally Flensburg also lost (21:26 in Lemgo). The defeat came as a surprise because the Flensburg team had played well a few days ago and had taught the current champions SC Magdeburg their first bankruptcy of the season.
Anyone who would like to bet their money on a future new handball champion these days is of course welcome to do so. But maybe it’s a better idea to leave it alone.
The past season was already refreshingly extraordinary, as Magdeburg took the liberty of almost never losing and snatching the title by a long way – also because other clubs were hit hard by Corona, while SCM was hardly hit. They may have interpreted this coup in Kiel and Flensburg as a singular event, in the sense of: It won’t happen again, such a march through. But now it is not only clear that it will be difficult again for the regular favourites. The circle of title contenders has even increased according to the current status.
Kiel conceded a surprising number of goals, while Flensburg only threw seven in a half
The great victory of the Berlin foxes with a difference of eight goals clearly illustrated that the chasing teams in the league did a really good job and reduced their deficit, if not already made up for it. THW Kiel is still the club with the greatest reputation and the largest budget; but that doesn’t automatically mean that he can send the best players onto the plate. A key man at 34:26 was the Dane Mathias Gidsel, 23, the MVP of the 2021 Summer Games in Tokyo, who was then discussed with almost all top clubs in Europe – and decided on Berlin. The astonishment was initially great when the club announced the signing of the dangerous left-hander for the 2022/23 season, but the foxes seem to have had the right arguments to lure one of the most sought-after players to the capital.
It’s paying off now, Gidsel (five goals) couldn’t be caught by Kiel, afterwards the Dane said they had “shown the league that they can count on us”. A declaration of war? Yes, absolutely.
On the Kiel side, Patrick Wiencek stated after conceding 74 goals in two games that the opponent was “better than us in every respect”. THW employees rarely formulate such sentences. However, it was even worse for Flensburg in Lemgo. Only seven goals in the first half, that was an almost inexplicable number for a team that relies so much on speed play as Flensburg. Now, after seven games of the season, the SG is already down five points in the table, behind clubs like Erlangen and Hannover-Burgdorf. Erlangen, for example, has so far been in the lower midfield, but thanks to years of meticulous work, they can now also be seen as an example of how the less solvent clubs have caught up. This is respected by the established players, Flensburg’s captain Johannes Golla declared quite bluntly after the bankruptcy in Lemgo: “Today everything was too bad. That’s how we gamble away all the goals we have.”
Lemgo’s Slovenian goalkeeper Urh Kastelic summed it up nicely: “This league is crazy.” “Anything can always happen”.
Until Pekeler and Sagosen return to THW, the motto is: hold on!
Some things can of course be put into perspective and explained. Flensburg had a much more difficult opening program with games against Füchse, Rhein-Neckar Löwen and Magdeburg than the table leaders from Mannheim, who had no loss points and who only got the most of the big calibers in the course of October and November. It could be that the lions are no longer in front without losing points. but who knows that?
In Kiel, on the other hand, people have been positively surprised so far at how quietly the season went until the foxes game. Problems were expected, because even the THW cannot permanently replace two top-class players like Hendrik Pekeler (torn Achilles tendon) and Sander Sagosen (ankle fracture). Both will probably only be able to intervene reliably again in the second half of the season. Until then, the motto is: persevere.
