Croatia’s gold quest at Beach Handball EURO ends in quarter-final

Their quarter-final against Norway at the Men's Beach Handball EURO 2019 is already over for 10 minutes on Friday evening when the Croatian players are still hanging around at Court 3.

Head coach Mladen Paradzik and his assistant, Mario Mocilac, sit on a bench, quietly, full of disbelief.

Croatia, arguably the biggest tournament favourites, have just lost 2:0 against Norway. The result keeps the Balkan nation out of the semi-finals of the European Championships for the first time since 2006.

Croatia won the tournament four times between 2009 and 2015 before finishing their home tournament in 2017 in third place. Their dream of returning to the European throne is over for at least another two more years.

Defeat comes as a surpise

The defeat comes as a surprise. Norway are definitely tough opponents, but Croatia have won all seven matches so far in the tournament without dropping a single set along the way.

“Croatia are used to getting to the semi-finals,” head coach Paradzik has told eurohandball.com after the main round. “So the quarter-final is the most difficult game for us. Because after that, you are in the medal honours or you are down in the lower ranks.”

Anything else for Croatia than an appearance in this weekend’s medal matches would be a huge surprise, and Paradzik was aware of it.

“Croatia in the beach handball world has a lot of success. This is something like normal for us,” he said. “We always have this opportunity to reach the medals, so the people from Croatia expect that from us. That is also a little burden for us.”

Being a small nation has an advantage

One might wonder how a nation with a population of just over four million can be on top of a sport for so many years. But being a small nation also has its advantage.

“Most of the players are from Zagreb or the community around Zagreb. For us it is easy to train more because the guys are a lot together,” Paradzik said.

“The most important reason for our success is that we have a strong support from our federation, they believe in us,” he said. “In two, three years we have built a good competition system, with a national championship. Through that competition system we have enough players to chose from.”

Even when the sport has been popular for so long, don’t think that Croatia is a country full of sandy courts.

“In Zagreb we have four courts. That’s it!” Paradzik said with a smile. “So we don’t have the infrastructure, but we do have that playing system. We also have the knowledge we collected from 20 years of playing the sports.”

“The guys are really dedicated to the sport. They trained really hard for this,” said Paradzik, the face of many Croatian triumphs in the past.

One of the sport's leading players

Paradzik, now 36, was a key member of the team that won the world title in 2008 in Spain, scoring eight points when Croatia defeated Brazil 2:1 in the final. He also won the Beach Handball EURO in 2009, ’11 and ’13, before he played his last major tournament for the national team, winning silver at the worlds in 2014 in Brazil.

As one of the sport’s leading players, Paradzik was invited for an All-star Team that played a demonstration match in Lausanne four years ago, an attempt to convince the IOC from beach handball’s Olympic potential.

But even for a former international of his standing the transition from player to coach was not easy.

“I played with those players a few years ago,” Paradzik said. “But the guys are really wonderful. They accept me and my colleague, Mario Mocilac, really well and we don’t have problems regarding the relation between players and coach.”

On the contrary, Paradzik doesn’t want to be a head coach who stands above the players.

“You also need to listen to their opinions,” he said. “If you have strong players like (Matej) Semren, (Ivan) Dumencic or (Ivan) Juric, you need to listen to what they have to say to you because they know a lot, also.”