Handball President Andreas Michelmann recommends that the German Football Association (DFB) look without boundaries when looking for a new national coach. “It’s always about finding the best solution – and quality is more important than the passport. We have ever-improving coach training in handball. Nevertheless, international impulses on our path have already been worth their weight in gold twice, when I think of Vlado Stenzel and Dagur Sigurdsson,” said the President of the German Handball Association.
The Croatian Stenzel led the DHB team to a World Cup triumph in 1978, and the Icelander Sigurdsson won European Championship gold in 2016. The current national handball coach also does not have a German passport: the Icelandic Alfred Gislason has held the position since February 2020.
Other success factors
In Michelmann’s opinion, the origin of a national coach plays no role at all. Success factors are rather “expertise, empathy and being able to speak the language of a team”.
Christian Kamp, Dortmund Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 13 A comment from Christopher Meltzer, Munich Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 2 Tobias Rabe, Dortmund Published/Updated: Recommendations: 1
After parting ways with Hansi Flick, the DFB is looking for a national coach to lead the team to a successful home European Championship in 2024. DFB President Bernd Neuendorf declared on the sidelines of the 2-1 win against World Cup runners-up France that he did not want to rule out “any option”. In the association’s 123-year history, there has never been a foreign national coach.
