If the energy of the national coaches indicates the creative power of their teams, then a lot can be expected from the German teams at the European Hockey Championships for women and men in Mönchengladbach, which starts this Friday. Both women’s trainer Valentin Altenburg and his men’s colleague Andre Henning are looking forward to the tournament with passion and anticipation.
Peter Pender
Deputy Editor-in-Chief for Sports.
Apparently, that’s not just the case for those directly involved – the 9,000-seat hockey park, strategically located just a few kilometers from the hockey strongholds of the Netherlands and Belgium, is sold out on many days and otherwise at least very well attended. So the black zero is already there, which is of extreme importance for the notoriously tight association.
World Cup trophy for Germany
Everything else is now an encore. The biggest would be a European Championship title – only the European Champion has his place at the Olympic Games in Paris, all others have to take the expensive detour via Olympic qualifying tournaments. This also applies to the men’s world champion Germany, who wrote a special story in India in January when he equalized 0-2 deficits in the last minutes in the quarterfinals and semifinals against England and Australia as well as in the final against Belgium overcame seemingly hopeless situations and ultimately secured the World Cup trophy.
It would be presumptuous to say that it would be a favorite for the tournament in front of their own audience, but the European title is still the declared goal for a team that took some time to come to terms with the crazy days in India. “We make no secret of the fact that one or the other fell into a hole afterwards. After all, with the World Cup victory, some of the burden that had accumulated over the years fell away,” says Henning, who took over the team after the failed bronze medal at the 2021 Olympic Games.
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Henning gave his players time and just as much understanding. “At first we had a more humanistic approach than a sports-scientific one,” says the national coach, but the prospect of the European Championships in their own country soon provided the necessary boost of motivation. After all, it is the first major home tournament since the double European championship in 2011 in the same place. “There has been a lot of excitement in the hockey community for many weeks. Everyone has tickets, everyone is looking forward to meeting each other here at a hockey festival in Gladbach,” says captain Mats Grambusch.
Germany meets Wales in the group games this Saturday (6 p.m.), followed by the classic game against defending champions the Netherlands (6 p.m.) on Monday and the game against France on Wednesday (7.30 p.m.). The other group features Olympic champions Belgium, Spain, Austria and England, who are probably still wondering how they lost a 2-0 lead over Germany in the final two minutes of the World Cup quarter-finals.
Memories for both captains
The German women have to deal with British hockey first. In the group matches, the fourth-placed team will meet Scotland (this Friday, 7.30 p.m.), then England (Sunday, 5.30 p.m.) and finally Ireland (Tuesday, 7.30 p.m.). All German preliminary round games can be seen in the live stream on ARD/ZDF and on Sport 1, only in the case of finals with German participation does the switch to the main program of ARD and ZDF follow.
Incidentally, both captains have special memories of Mönchengladbach: Mats Grambusch was a ball kid at the men’s World Cup in 2006, as was Nike Lorenz at the 2011 European Championship. So it’s worth taking a closer look there too.
