Es would have given enough grounds for quarreling; about the schedule, the injuries, about the first leg in which SC Magdeburg gave away a five-goal lead. None of this was heard from the SCM. There was just this one game where, despite the odds, anything would happen.
It doesn’t only happen in professional handball to build up just in case and to paint the hopelessness of one’s own situation as a precaution. To praise the opponent over the green clover. Or trying to lower your own pressure by dwelling on how important the next game really is.
Great things should happen here
The Magdeburg resisted before the second leg in the Champions League quarter-finals in their own hall against Wisla Plock. Coach Bennet Wiegert talked his own, enormously weakened team strong. He challenged the fans to turn the Getec Arena into an impregnable fortress. And in the last few days before the game, he didn’t say anything publicly.
Afterwards, if something worked, it’s always easy to explain why. In the case of SC Magdeburg, you have to acknowledge that the attitude with which this club went into the game on Wednesday evening was exactly the right one: Great things should succeed here. And everyone went with them. The SCM prevailed after a 22:22 in the first leg with 30:28.
Reaching the final round in Cologne in mid-June for the first time is not only a success because of the generous prize money, which makes future work easier – the winner gets one million euros. For the image of the German champions, this is the next accolade after he recently won the World Cup twice.
In the scene, nobody is surprised anymore that courted stars like the Swede Felix Claar are moving to Magdeburg and not Paris in the summer, or that established forces like Gísli Kristjánsson are extending their contracts and resisting Barcelona. After years of sadness, Magdeburg has developed into a European handball center, which is primarily due to the work of coach and sports director Wiegert.
Now he could have criticized the Handball Bundesliga (HBL) for “rewarding” the SCM for reaching the quarter-finals with difficult league games before and after the first knockout game – an enormous and unnecessary stress test that the THW Kiel fell victim to the parallel game at Paris Saint-Germain and was eliminated. He could have referred to five injured regulars, three of whom were out in the first leg. All of this would have had its justification. But he didn’t.
Wiegert’s main merit in this quarter-final thriller is neither tactics nor attitude nor the ability to change hands in and against Plock. It’s something else: he has committed his team to a great goal, rallying behind him and forbidding excuses. This mental preparation was worth more than the best match plan, the finest adjustment to the opponent.
