Halfway to Cologne?

It was fantastic! The team and families were together. The Hungarian culture, food and team met each other. All together, it provided good memories.

Throughout the last few months living here, how has your Hungarian shaped out to be?

We have Hungarian classes 3 times per week. The problem is, I simply don’t have the time to study, Xaver is much better in speaking than me. However, we have players that speak English, Spanish and know just the right amount of Hungarian that helps them communicate the basics. Ideally, I would like to learn Hungarian faster but whenever I have free time, I drive back up to Budapest to see my family.

Was it difficult to teach the Hungarian players the Spanish style of play?

The Hungarian players are in great condition both physically and mentally. There are times when they don’t play according to what I planned out in tactics, but one thing is for sure, whenever they see the chance to score, the shoot. We coaches tell them to build up their play and only shoot when there is no man on the shooter. We Spanish like to play this way. To be honest, the first 2-3 months were proved to be difficult. We needed to learn how to play as a team, but now I feel we’ve accomplished that. For instance, Csaszar is playing very well. We had a few problems with Csarli in both defending and attacking but he is one of the best now.

So you feel that those mentioned players improved the most?

Yes, I think so. However, you would have to ask the players themselves. Everyone is trying their best.  I am very satisfied with how the autumn season turned out to be. After the break, many of our players go on international duty. We can only hope that they don’t injure themselves. After the report back to MKB Veszprem we will have to rotate players to make sure they haven’t forgotten the way we play here in Veszprem.

What will happen to those players that won’t be traveling to the World Championships?

For us this is a positive. They will be able to rest. We will have players staying from the first team, as well as from our reserves. We will have time to stay in shape and get ready for the second part of the season. After everyone gets back from international duty, we will have exactly 1 week to train and get ready for our Champions League game against Constanca. Ideally, I would have liked the team to be able to train together for a longer period of time, but the World Cup is the World Cup.

Are you hard on your players?

When I need to be, yes. Especially when it comes to keeping to the rules.

The team is very multicultural, in terms of mentality and style of play. How have you been able to make them work together successfully?

By now, everyone on the team knows their exact position in the team. The players like to train, which is one of the most important things. The whole group wants to improve day by day, and their mentality is great as well. So far, we’ve only lost one game, against Szeged. When we win, we win together. When we lose, we lose together.

Nagy Laszlo has played in Barcelona for more than 10 years. His Spanish is nearly perfect and his style of play as well. Is he the key man on the team?

Laszlo has been a great help not just on the field, but off of it as well. At first Chema was the man that filled this position. I want to emphasize that the whole team is key to winning, not just a single person.

What is going to be the teams schedule ahead of the coming weeks?

We start training on January 14^th. The players will have one week off and then will start working on maintaining their condition ahead of our first training session. When they get back, it is important to be on the same level as to when they left. As for our international players, we will be in contact with them through the weeks as to what type of training they need to do.

Everyone is talking about being in the final four. What are your thoughts on this?

It is still very early to talk about that. Right now, I am very satisfied with how everyone is working at the club. We are currently first in a group which proved to be extremely difficult. Like I said, we are still very far from the final four and need to concentrate on the remaining games beforehand.

Bezdek Márk