An December 23rd he drove home north, on December 25th he took the train back south-west – Juri Knorr’s Christmas party was once again briefly cancelled. The 22-year-old handball professional loves his home in Schleswig-Holstein. The parents live in Bad Schwartau near Lübeck. The Baltic Sea is close. But the schedule doesn’t allow for much more than flying visits at the end of the year. And if you’re wearing the jersey of the Rhein-Neckar Löwen as a northern light, you’ve got a long way to go with your family.
Apparently, Knorr did well with the holiday tours: he scored eleven goals in the 37:27 of the Löwen against newly promoted Hamm on Boxing Day. The fact that Mannheim got off to an excellent first half of the season with 29:7 points is also down to their young playmaker – Knorr was in all 18 games and scored 117 goals, 77 of them from the field. Because left winger Uwe Gensheimer is injured, Knorr is also starting from the seven-meter point. His score is so good here and there that he is second in the top scorer list behind Hamburg’s Caspar Mortensen. That’s unusual for a director. Six and a half goals per game, a rate of 66 percent: these are almost top values.
Andy Schmid’s big footsteps
When Löwen managing director Jennifer Kettemann extended the contract with Knorr by three years a week ago and spoke of a “milestone in personnel policy”, that was more than just a phrase. A team is growing around Knorr that will win championship honors in the next three years and build on the great years of 2016 and 2017. The Swede Mikael Appelgren in goal, the wingers Patrick Groetzki and Gensheimer, plus Olle Forsell Schefvert in defense and pivot Jannik Kohlbacher: It’s a mixture of class and experience that should help the lions to conquer the summit again after weak years.
The whole thing is led by the new coach Sebastian Hinze. In his second year with the yellow and blues, Knorr is taking on a lot of responsibility on the field. He manages to do this seemingly effortlessly, which can’t possibly be easy in the midst of well-established actors, who meanwhile, however, allow himself to be led by him with little care. This in turn has to do with the fact that Knorr took an apprenticeship with one of the greats last season: after twelve years, Andy Schmid said goodbye to the lions in the summer. Not without having properly trained his successor.
Anyone who sees Knorr’s allusions to the circle is reminded of Schmid. It was the plan of the Rhein-Neckar Löwen to get a smooth transition to the director’s position. In the 2021/22 season, that didn’t work out with tenth place. But now, completely renewed and in fresh splendor, the lions seem to have found their way to success. Knorr is cautious in assessing the situation, both for the club and for himself. “Praise and blame are always dependent on performance,” he says in the style of a veteran. He himself has experienced how quickly attributions can be made in both directions.
The son of the former Kiel professional Thomas Knorr is currently considered the key player in the national team for the World Cup in Poland and Sweden, which begins on January 12th. When he missed the European Championships in Hungary and Slovakia a year ago because he was not vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2, he had to accept unpleasant long-distance judgments about himself. He’s been through a lot, says Knorr, and doesn’t just mean the past twelve months. The longing for a strong playmaker has been focused on him for a long time. Knorr seems as if he has learned to deal with great expectations.
