Dhe usual view of those responsible for the annual major tournaments has received a new facet. Up until the 2020 European Championship, Bundesliga coaches and managers tended to look less at the respective event from the point of view of winners and losers. Your main focus was on your own pros in the various national teams: who will come through? Who gets hurt? Some people quietly welcomed it when countries with many of “their” players were eliminated early – which happens relatively rarely, as Denmark, Sweden and Norway usually play to the end. And these countries mostly have Bundesliga professionals in their ranks.
There were very few injuries at this European Championship in Hungary and Slovakia, which ended with the final between Sweden and Spain. Corona-related failures are more than 100. If the Handball Bundesliga continues its second half of the season on Sunday (February 6) with games in the round of 16 of the cup, the question will be: How can the virus be kept away from the teams? “We’re constantly worried about our players,” said the Kiel managing director Viktor Szilagyi to the “Kieler Nachrichten”. “During the European Championships we realized how powerless we are. We don’t know how quickly infected players will return to their level of performance.”
Kiel will play at the Rhein-Neckar Löwen next Sunday. Patrick Wiencek returned from the national team from Bratislava with a positive test and isolated himself in a hotel in Kiel. Swede Niclas Ekberg and Croatian Domagoj Duvnjak were also affected.
Of course, all EM returnees are tested before they start club training so that the virus is not introduced into the group from outside. This also applies to SG Flensburg-Handewitt or Füchsen Berlin, of which numerous professionals were in action on the final weekend – which players will actually be able to play for the upcoming cup or league games (February 9th/10th) will only become clear in show in the coming days.
The HBL league association has taken precautions. In the following cup round and on the first Bundesliga matchday, games can therefore be canceled if six players and two goalkeepers in a team are infected with the corona virus. After that, the previous rule should apply again, according to which a game can only be canceled if more than 50 percent of the players fail. HBL boss Frank Bohmann said: “We have to live with the fact that we will also have infected players when we restart. This will be the new normal. We have to come to terms with the virus.”
