Interview with Ljubomir Vranjes

My first impressions are very good. I like the nature around Veszprém. I have been driving around and I really like the Balaton. It is very beautiful with all the historic places. Veszprém is a small and cozy town, but so far I have not met so many people yet. I like the food and I like the wine as well. I think it is going to be a great time here.

 

 

I started as a player, then a sports director and then as a coach. I knew the club very well from the scratch until the highest level. I made a progress which later made me a coach at the end and with small steps we reached big goals. Of course 11 years are a lot and it was hard to leave Flensburg because the most players have spent 7 years with me. I am a guy who does everything with a heart. It was hard to leave them, but it was time to leave them. They need a new coach, a new experience and a new voice. I am glad for my time there but it is time for new beginnings.

 

I will start with Flensburg. We did a good season. Until January we only had one lost game in the Bundesliga against Kiel by one goal. Then in the Champions League I tried out some things with developing young players. I think we did great until December then came the World Championship in France and my players were very tired because we also had an Olympic year. I had a lot of Danish players, they won Olympic gold. It was not only hard for us but for a lot of teams because of the players in the national teams. Olympic years are always like that. We lost only 4 games. We had a big chance to win the Bundesliga but we did not manage it, we had some problems with injured players. At the end I had to play without Holger Glandorf or Johan Jakobsson. It was a big handicap for us. In the last 7 weeks in the Championship I had to play without a right back. It was hard but at the end we came to the 2nd place but I was satisfied with how the guys fought anyway. It is not easy. Everybody wants to win and there are a lot of good teams out there. One of them is Veszprém of course.

For Veszprém you can say they did what we did in reverse. They were not so good in the beginning of the season but they fought back and played good handball. I did not follow every game of Veszprém but to win the Hungarian championship and Cup against Szeged is not easy. Every game is very hard. They qualified for the Final4 in Cologne, again. Only that is a huge achievement. A team like Veszprém always want to win the Champions League. They did not manage it this time, it was very close, only one goal. In Cologne every game was close and you have to have luck on your side to be able to win.

We would like to play good handball in Veszprém and manage to qualify to Cologne once more. When we get there, there will be just one thing that I will be fighting for: to be the champion.

 

 

There will be medical checks on the 21st of July and then I am going to meet them for the first time. On the 23rd of July I am going to meet them all at once.

 

We are going to start in Veszprém, after that we go to Slovenia for 10-11 days. There we will do the training camp and then come back home, have some games in Germany and then in Veszprém in the tournament in August. The season is almost starting. It is going to be great.

 

The first goal is to make them physically fit. I do not know how they trained before. I have a pretty hard way from the beginning. You cannot achieve anything at the end of the season, in May or June if you have not trained well in July and August. It has to be a motivation to train like hell to win everything in Hungary and in Cologne.

 

I am a coach who demands 100% heart, 100% passion and 100% will. If the players give this to me every time they step on the court, I am satisfied with the players regardless of the result. You can miss a shot, you can have a bad day, everyone has. We have a lot of fans in this Arena and a lot of fans who follow us when we play, we owe them these 3 things. I would like to make a few changes in the way they play handball. To motivate 21 players is not always easy as a coach but I have a plan. I hope that the players accept this because everyone of them will get a role, like in a movie. Someone will be Jim Carrey, someone will be Tom Cruise or maybe I will need an Arnold Schwarzenegger sometimes. Everything is about winning, we want to win every game and that is how it will go.

 

I will do a lot of things. My wife's brother is getting married, we are going to Greece with 20 people, family mostly from around the world. We will meet in Athens and we will spend 10 days together. From a 2 years old child to a 75 years old. I am really looking forward to see my family because I am a family guy. I will spend some time in Sweden in my summer house and after that I start working.

 

I am very happy to work in front of such amazing fans in an amazing atmosphere. We want to keep this atmosphere alive. I will be a part of it, the team will be a part of it. I promise that these earlier mentioned 3 things will be delivered to the players and I hope we will win together.

 

 

Photos: Dávid Vörös