President of the Handball Federation of Russia drew results of the first year of his presidency
– Some time ago the chief coach of the women’s national team Evgeny Trefilov called Russian handball “a dying kind of sport”. It’s been a year since your election as the President of the HFR – was it enough to realize the scale of what’s going on. Do you see yourself as a coroner, a resuscitator or a surgeon?
– With all due respect to Trefilov, I think the patient is very much alive and does everything to get better. Let’s take a look on what we’ve had in this season. Yes, the key successful results belong to the women’s team – the girls showed good performance at the world championship, confidently qualified for the Olympic Games. But we shouldn’t forget about the men’s team even if we consider the result to be unsatisfactory, however the guys came very close to passing the Olympics Qualifications and they are taken seriously. One more fact supports my last statement: we are getting more and more offers to friendly games and tournaments from leading European national teams.
We have managed to organize and to hold the IHF World Youth (U-19) Championship at the highest level. Arenas were bursting at seams at every play-off game. We built effective communication with the World and European Handball Federations – we are gradually returning the previous influence on international area that Russia had lost in the previous years. It was the first time in a long while when IHF held its Congress in Russia. Almost 150 national federations gathered in Sochi to discuss the key issues of handball development. I can frankly say that the HFR and I personally have great relations with the IHF President Dr. Hassan Moustafa. He likes Russia and makes no secret of it. I would also like to mention good communication with the Ministry of Sport of Russia, many thanks to Vitaly Mutko – we always feel his support and attention to our problems.
The HFR launched a large-scale federal project – the All-Russian Children’s Handball League with over 200 teams with girls and boys born in 2004-2005 from 29 regions of Russia and 10 federal regions. We are grateful to Mikhail Gutseriev and his charity fund “SAFMAR” for the interest in children’s handball.
The next year we will introduce a comprehensive statistics system that functions online all over the country – these investments will benefit us for the next decade at least.
The most important thing is that people are getting interested in handball again. For the last ten years handball was on the fringes of public attention. We managed to get it back to the media space.
Nevertheless, there is still a lot of work ahead of us. When I headed the Federation last year, the new team carefully analyzed the state of affairs. And we do realize that we can somehow fix and mend the Russian handball only in 5-10 years. But having a Russian handball team at the Olympic Games in Rio is already a great success.
HANDBALL AS SUPER PRODUCT
– After you became President of the HFR you said that you want our handball players to stop feeling under-appreciated in Russia. Have they?
– I think so, yes. I’ll say once again that we’re quite active in media space nowadays. Recently Vladimir Maksimov said that the coaches should try to keep up with information support of handball as well. The media talk about handball more often now than a year ago. Handball also returned to TV broadcasting – not only to the federal channel “Match” but to the news, different programs and in a form of big interviews. Now people know not just the names of handball legends but active players as well. It was wonderfully pleasant to hear Dmitry Chernyshenko saying to Dmitry Rogozin that in winter World Women’s Championship broadcasting got a better rating than a Russian football team.
You see, we often complain that our stadiums are not always a full house, it goes for all kinds of sport, but we can solve this problem if we work on it. I’m proud that right now handball has enough games with full-house arenas. A vivid example is recent Olympics Qualification games in Astrakhan. The arena was packed with people standing up, watching the games. 6 thousand people! I’ve already mentioned Ekaterinburg. In Rostov they’ve made a super product out of handball – with laser show and festive performances. It makes us strive to move forward, to raise our bar.
– There are talks of crisis in the Russian coach school. Not just in handball, in many kinds of sport. How do you tackle this problem if you have it?
– We are lucky that the Russian handball has Vladimir Maksimov. He’s not only a genius coach but also a teacher. His former players are now working in handball, implementing the experience of training with Maksimov. Three Sydney Olympic champions head Super League clubs – Dmitry Torgovanov, Lev Voronin, and Eduard Koksharov. Moreover, Torgovanov and Voronin are coaches of the Russian national team. It is very important for me that the Russian handball has continuous legacy of generations.
– What did you mean by “a new stage of relations” between the HFR and the International Handball Federation?
– Over the last year Russia has proven that it can organize and hold large-scale international events at the highest level. The more events of this caliber are held in Russia, the more authority we gain. In summer Russia will host the World Women’s (U-20) Handball Championship. You probably already know about our intention to apply for hosting the IHF World Women’s Championship 2023 and Men’s European Championship 2022. Heads of the IHF and the EHF supported our idea.
COMPLEX METICULOUS WORK
– One of the main problems of the Russian Championships is the unjustifiably big number of transfers in the games’ schedule.
– I agree that along with the referring it is the biggest complication of the Russian championships. Most of all, in men’s Super League. This is the result of serious financial problems that have to be tackled by several clubs in the end of 2015. But it is these transfers that helped to keep all the teams in the championship. None of the Super League clubs withdrew from the competition and went the distance. But the problem remains, and our Head of the Board of Trustees Dmitry Rogozin pays close attention to it. He is not just a nominal executive; he actually participates in our events, holds meetings when important issues have to be discussed. Besides, he plays handball and cherishes the idea of restoring a men’s handball club in Moscow at Moscow Aviation Institute and recreating the CSKA handball club. There is a serious challenge ahead of us – to solve all organizational matters of the national championship. We need a strong championship with a high competitive edge.
– How you evaluate the work of the regional federations, including development of children’s and youth handball?
– We have completed the first stage of the all-Russian Children’s Handball League and now the second stage is ongoing. It is really a serious large-scale project. It was launched this year thanks to the support of Mikhail Gutseriev’s charity foundation “SAFMAR”. We have provided young handball players with a possibility to compete with coevals at the regional level, as well as at the federal one. I would like this new league to become popular and to pave the way for the young players to professional sport.
This is a complex and meticulous work. Take a look at your national teams. If the inflow of new players to the women’s national team is quite steady, the men’s handball national team doesn’t have this luck. The results support the reality. The girls get high scores at the World and European championships whereas the guys don’t. At the last European men’s championship, the Russian national team was one of the oldest ones. Children’s and youth sports schools specializing on handball need to improve their work. HFR will assist them as much as possible. We intend to keep close touch with the International and European Federations in order to bring couching seminars to Russia. We lack young coaches who can prepare top-class players. We also want to ask for the assistance of the Ministry of Sport to create in Moscow a Federal handball center based on the Olympic Reserve Academy No.2.
WE WILL CHEER FOR “LADA”
– In any case the key indicators of the Federation’s work are the results of the national teams at the World and European Championships and the results of the leading clubs at continental Cups. How do you evaluate the results of 2015/2016?
– Our women’s national team successfully qualified for the Olympic Games third time in a row. They will fight for medals there. At the World Championship in Denmark last year the team of Evgeniy Trefilov won 7 out of 8 games and came in fifth. A year before our team didn’t get in the top-8 at the European championship. That is why we see the today’s result as a big step forward. The men’s national team came in 9th at the last European Championship in Poland, in line with the result of the World Championship 2014. We missed one score to overcome the Swedish team. And unfortunately, we did not and the Scandinavians participated at the Qualifying Tournament where they won the tickets to Rio.
In the Champion’s League we count on the strongest Russian women’s team “Rostov-Don”. This team managed to set a tournament’s record – they won 11 out of 12 games of the 2 group stages and one game was a tie. Unfortunately, our girls could not win the Romanian champions “CSM Bucuresti”. In May we will cheer for the Tolyatti club “Lada” that got into the finals of the Cup Winner’s Cup.