Top coaches follow the future at W19 EHF EURO 2023

Moving closer to 2023, players like Anna Vyakhireva, Emily Bölk, Henny Reistad, Djurdjina Jaukovic or Katrin Klujber all made the All-star Team at the W19 EHF EURO in different editions of the competition, before taking the world of handball by storm.

Therefore, it is no surprise that the senior national team coaches are paying close attention to the competition and are present in Pitesti and Mioveni this July to witness closely the future stars and monitor with care what is going one and what are the new trends at the W19 EHF EURO.

Over the first week of the competition in Romania, Florentin Pera, Markus Gaugisch or Tomas Axnér have all watched the games from the stands, while Per Johansson and Martin Albertsen even sat on the bench for the games of their national teams.

Asked about the reasons why they decided to spend a fortnight of their summer taking a closer look at the W19 EHF EURO 2023, the reasons are more or less the same: seeing how the future players develop and how they cope under the requirements of such a competition.

“It is always nice to see young players trying to deliver good performances for their national teams level,” says Florentin Pera, the coach of the Romania women’s senior national team.

“This is undoubtedly the highest level and we all want to see what is going on in these teams and who are the next stars, to prepare our teams for the future, because good performances are clearly important for the senior team on the short term, but we need to think long term and have a clear strategy in place to remain at a top level.”

While Pera might look for Romania’s future, having already helped left back Diana Lixăndroiu and right wing Mihaela Mihai make their debuts for the senior team, Martin Albertsen has a totally different situation.

Albertsen was the coach who helped Switzerland break their duck at the senior EHF EURO back in November 2022 and has helped transform women’s handball in Switzerland from an also-ran to an emerging side in Europe.

The 45-year-old Danish coach was appointed in 2018 and has coached both the senior and the junior teams, before handing in his resignation in May, as he is due to take over the finalists of the last season in the EHF Champions League Women, FTC-Rail Cargo Hungaria.

Before moving on to pastures new, Albertsen still kept his side of the bargain and helped Switzerland deliver their first-ever top-eight finish at the W19 EHF EURO, progressing from the preliminary round with an attractive style and a high-octane brand of handball.

“I have worked with this team for a few years now and this is the highlight for them. These are young players, there are more mistakes than you can see in the senior team, but it is the right way to develop players. I have seen a lot of talent here, not only for Switzerland, but also for other teams,” says Albertsen.

“For Switzerland, this competition is paramount. For other sides, it is very important, because they can see the future at work. In our case, we have built the future and have embraced the same philosophy, which is to use the same systems like in the senior teams, for players to have an easier transition.”

The same pattern has also emerged in Sweden’s case, with the coach of the senior team, Tomas Axnér, supervising a masterplan designed to create a seamless transition from the youth and junior teams to the senior squad, helping the players settle in immediately.

Axnér has joined the team from the main round and has a good knowledge of the current squad, having served as the interim coach for this generation at the 2022 IHF Women’s Youth World Championship, where Sweden ended up on the sixth place.

“At the Swedish Handball Federation, we have designed a masterplan to have the players speak the same language – so to say – to have the same playbook for all national teams, in order to have a good transition between the teams and when the players get to the senior squad, to have no issues whatsoever and to fit in immediately,” says Axnér.

Players like Nina Koppang, or Axnér’s daughter, Tyra, have been the beneficiaries of this system, making the shift from the junior team to the senior one without any issues and slotting in immediately in their positions.

For the Netherlands, these tournaments are a good indicator of how their system – based on a state-of-the-art project including the HandbalAcademie – works. The intricacies are quite simple: the most talented players enter a handball academy, where they are developed and have their skills refined.

But there is also a catch: the main responsible for the HandbalAcademie project is Ricardo Clarijs, the Netherlands’ youth and junior women’s national teams coach. Clarijs is also the assistant of the senior national team, with Per Johansson leading the way.

However, this time around, Johansson came to Romania, where he plied his trade at club level for CSM București, to fill in as Clarijs’ assistant, with the Dutch senior team’s assistant coach assuming the head coach position and making all the decisions during the matches.

“For me it is important to also influence these younger age category sides, try to build a system from the senior team down to all the youth national teams and I always go every year with them to oversee what is happening. The aim is to create the same playbook, instil the same values.”

“If you want to stay in this job for many years, you have to pay attention to the players who are coming through the system and see how other sides play, what they are bringing to the table,” concludes Johansson.

photos © Jozo Cabraja/kolektiff, Marius Ionescu