„We are trying to create the best professional cooperation.”

 

Telekom Veszprém’s CL Champion has strengthen its team before the new season not only with Hungarian and foreign players but with a new sport director. Nikola Eklemovic (38) did not have to introduce himself when he joined the professional staff of the Club because 5 years ago he was a member of the Hungarian Champion team. Moreover in those colors he was a key figure in the EHF Cup Winners’ Cup winner team in 2008. From that team Gergő Iváncsik (35) and Péter Gulyás (32) are still enjoying the trust of Coach Xavi Sabaté and preparing for the “four-front battle’s” struggle.

 

 

 

After his retirement last year Eklemovics, who helped the Hungarian National Team on 32 matches and Veszprém’s team through 7 years, took part in helping the multiple champion-team, which will be called Telekom Veszprém in the new season. All of this happened at the request of Kálomista Gábor, who is the Mómanaging director of Co. Ltd., which manages the team. This team was the Hungarian Champion and Cup Winner; nevertheless they won the SEHA League for the second time in last year. Moreover the team got into the Champions League Final4, which is every handball team’s dream, for the third time in a row.

 

Nikola Eklemovic has started his statement, which he gave for the Telekom Sporthír Szolgálat as the followings: “It was a pleasure to join one of Europe’s and the handball world’s best team, which has a tarnished history, firm present and great future.” He arrived from Belgrade to Hungary in 1999 and was a member of the eternal rival Szeged for five years. “Huge tasks are ahead of László Nagy and the team in the future too. As Veszprém has always counted as a result-oriented Club, the gauge is still on the same level. It is a pleasure that the Club has created the possibility of making the team younger, stronger and of course the condition to make and ideal distribution of the burden. The team has never consisted of 27 players and there was no example for giving the chance for 11 new young players.”

 

 

Nikola Eklemovic thinks that these young players will realize it only later what a great chance they got.

 

“These boys will realize later what a great and useful thing is to train among former CL champions for example in the company of Nagy, Ilics, Ugalde, Chéma and Nilsson. The boys can improve by watching them and draw strength from their courage on the matches.”- continued Eklemovic, who got a gold medal as the player of Nagybánya in the Romanian Championship before his last-year-retirement. “From the beginning of the season Telekom Veszprém has to perform on more than 70 matches until the end of the season not to mention our National Team players’ appearance on the matches. That is the reason that we had to broaden the team with talented and indefatigable young players. It means that a player has to play only on 40-45 matches unless there is a serious injury series. It makes it possible for the key players to be fresh and not apathetic on the most important matches at the end of the season including next year’s CL Final4.”

 

 

The newly certified goalkeeping coach Venio Losert and the Cuban-Hungarian Ivo Diaz (finished its carrier at the age of 44) help the work of Coah Xavi Sabaté and assistant coach Josep Espar Moya besides Nikola Eklemovic. Ivo Diaz was also a member of the World Team and he moved to Hungary in 1997 with his compatriots, Perez “Charlie” and Hernandez. Csaba Tombor, former National Team and Veszprém-player, is also helping the coaches.

 

Nikola Eklemovic, who would like to serve Veszprém as a sport director the same way as he did as a player, emphasized the followings: “We are trying to make the best professional cooperation. The most important task for me besides observing the players is to keep contact with the managers and give such advices which can be useful for Sabaté and his colleagues. I would say that our task is like a big and complicated puzzle, which challenges all of us.”