And now Jordi Ribera too. The third Spanish handball coach in just five days of the tournament, with whom national coach Alfred Gislason and the German national players will face in the game against Spain on Monday evening (8.30 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker and on ZDF).
The one who is the most experienced and successful coach of all and has a remodeled team that offers a good mix of old and young, experienced and resolute. This Monday, Ribera could help ensure that the European Championship for the selection of the German Handball Federation ends much earlier than expected.
The fact that Spaniards are sought after and successful as players and coaches in international handball is nothing new. But the fact that five Iberians are in charge of a national team at this European Championship and three of them are in the same preliminary group is quite extraordinary. Even if those involved downplay the successive direct duels, this is partly due to their modesty and partly due to the frequency of their meetings.
When someone like him has been in world handball for twenty years, said Serbian national coach Gonzalez at the Danish European Championship venue Herning, “then you have a number of friends on the other side”. So Spanish compatriots like Iker Romero, who looks after Austria’s national team and could cause the Serbs to stumble in a direct clash this Monday. Or Chema Rodriguez, who is responsible for the Hungarian team, and Jesús Javier González, who looks after Poland’s European Championship team.
Trainer training traditionally takes longer in Spain
The Spanish Armada attacks each other in Scandinavia in all friendship. Ribera has more crackers in his squad than González and Romero. But when it comes to the tactical on-board equipment, everyone has the same requirements. For example, Romero: He is “very meticulous,” Austria’s left winger Sebastian Frimmel said of his national coach at the start of the tournament: “He demands a lot of structure from us in defense. Everyone knows what they have to do and what is expected of them.”
It is qualities like these that make clubs in Europe and associations around the world keep hiring Spanish coaches. Benjamin Chatton, manager of the German national team, relied on Spanish expertise when he ran the Bundesliga club TSV Hannover-Burgdorf between 2011 and 2018. He initially brought in Roi Sánchez as youth coach and co-coach of the Bundesliga team, later Iker Romero – as assistant to Spanish head coach Carlos Ortega – took over the role of liaison between young talent and professionals until 2021. “The tactical depth was good for the players,” Chatton is still convinced today: “They got a broad impression that went beyond our own training content.”
Justus Fischer benefited from Romero’s support as a Bundesliga newcomer. “He is the coach who taught me the most,” said the pivot to the magazine “Bock auf Handball”. Like Fischer and Juri Knorr, who spent a year at FC Barcelona as a young professional, national team manager Chatton also knows the Spanish handball school closely. And he can therefore understand why his colleagues from other national associations rely on their graduates.
Coach training in Spain traditionally takes longer and is more detailed than elsewhere. According to Chatton, that doesn’t necessarily make them better than others: “But the duration means that more and different content can be conveyed.” The coaching training has a “very strong sports science background” and is rooted in the universities, explains Erik Wudtke, assistant coach of the German national team. The consequences extended beyond handball: “I think that Spanish coaches find very clever solutions in a wide variety of sports, especially in the tactical area.”
“Compared to basketball, the German league is the NBA”
No matter how high the tactical demands are and how meticulously all moves are rehearsed, the strengths of the Spanish system can occasionally become a weakness. Namely when the team’s tactical corset is so tight that individualists hardly have any space to develop freely. “The fact that there are clear guidelines sometimes limits creativity,” says Chatton.
As in many matters, it is not only the curricula that are crucial, but also the teachers who bring them to life. Spanish coaches have a reputation for adapting to the team’s personnel situation and adapting their style of play accordingly. Just like Romero, who has to deal with different types when working with Austria’s selection than in everyday life at the German second division club SG BBM Bietigheim and also gives them freedom.
The Spanish way of thinking about handball is passed on by the experienced coaches to their players and future successors. Iker Romero, now 45 years old, was influenced by Juan Carlos Pastor, who was twelve years older. The qualified chemist led Spain to the 2005 World Cup title as a 36-year-old national coach and has been continuing the Spanish tradition in Hanover for a few days now.
The Bundesliga was one of his “big life goals” after many years in his homeland, in Hungary and as coach of the Egyptian national team, Pastor said in an interview published by the club: “Compared to basketball, the German league is the NBA.” His players should “internalize everything we do” in Hanover. Another sentence that seems Spanish to everyone in handball. In Herning, the Iberian handball school is now contributing to the fact that the German team’s transfer to the main round of the European Championship is in extreme danger.
