The German national team will play their opening game at the Handball World Championship 2023 against Qatar on Friday. This also brings back memories of January 2015.
Trainer foxes and a Cuban “primal force”: Valero Rivera, Rafael Capote and Dagur Sigurdsson (from left).
imago images (3)
There are two results that seem to have fallen out of time. In fact, they are almost two decades ago: The DHB selection won the first two of their seven comparisons (4/0/3) with Qatar in January 2003 with 40:17 and in January 2005 with 40:15. Six years after the second hearty slap, the World Cup award to Qatar represented a kind of turning point.
The first German opponent at the 2023 World Cup began investing in handball and its infrastructure in 2011. The smartest move to date: install coach Valero Rivera. The 69-year-old coached the great FC Barcelona between 1983 and 2005 for a whopping 22 years. During this period alone, the Catalans have won the Spanish championship twelve times, the European Cup Winners’ Cup five times and the Champions League six times. A world club was born. Rivera crowned the following eight years as Spain national coach with the title at the home World Cup in 2013.
Then the title hamster followed the lure of Qatar, which he should quickly catapult into unimagined spheres. The Asian championship, won five times in a row between 2014 and 2022, pales in comparison to the historic home World Cup in 2015: Underdog Qatar advanced to the final as the only non-European team in World Cup history (since 1939), which ended in Doha with 22:25 was lost to France.
The “revenge” with Germany was also impressive: in 2015 Qatar threw out the DHB selection on the way to World Cup silver in the quarterfinals (26:24), two years later Rivera’s team beat the reigning European champions in the round of 16 (21:20) – It should be Dagur Sigurdsson’s last game as national coach.
Loophole in the IHF specifications
However, the “explosion” of the handball nation Qatar was not really clean, it was rather classified as “scandalous” by traditionalists. In preparation for the home World Cup, the questionable IHF regulations, according to which players were allowed to play for a new country after a three-year national team break, were used as a loophole. The core of the team in 2015 was made up of professionals who were born in Eastern Europe. The Cuban Rafael Capote (115 World Cup goals), a model athlete and real “breaker” in the left backcourt, caused many a favorite to fall.
While only two German players from the 2015 World Cup squad remained in Paul Drux and Patrick Groetzki at the 2023 World Cup in Poland and Sweden, Qatar has seven silver medalists. Including Capote – now 35 years old.
In the last three World Cups, Rivera’s team finished eighth twice and 13th once. The supposedly steep development was stopped, but Qatar was better than the DHB selection in two of the last three World Cup finals. What is really left of 2015? And what does it mean for 2023?
A Bundesliga professional in goal
In his analysis before the tournament, Germany’s assistant coach Erik Wudtke speaks of “two different back rows with which they are pursuing two different strategies”. One is “throw-oriented, physically very present, physically very strong”, and he particularly names Capote and Jovan Gacevic (born in Montenegro) as “real shooters”. Alternatively, Rivera can also use three flexible backcourt players who employ the DHB defense in one-on-one and use the extremely strong pivot Youssef Ben Ali (born in France and currently under contract).
Against the variable Qatar it is important to “find appropriate solutions”, said Wudtke. Also in attack, when the German team usually face a 6-0 defense, from which players regularly break out to disrupt the rhythm and provoke mistakes. With keeper Anadin Suljakovic (HSG Wetzlar, born in Bosnia-Herzegovina), Gislason’s protégés know an opponent particularly well. The 24-year-old should not become a stumbling block if possible. The DHB selection has had enough of World Cup disappointments against Qatar.
