Men’s national handball team: Ready to fight with Croatia

With a morning training session in the “Home of Handball” in Thessaloniki, the preparation of the men’s national handball team before the game against Croatia (October 12, 7 p.m., EHF TV) in the city of Varazdin in the premiere of the qualification for EURO 2024 was completed.

Our representative group departs at 12.00 for Zagreb with a stopover in Belgrade.

The national team consists of the following 17 athletes: Boukovinas, Papantonopoulos, Tziras, Arabatzis, Papavasilis, Kostakidis, Passias, Mylonas, Boskos, Kritikos, Toskas, Mallios, Dombri, Kandylas, Michaelidis, Papadionisiou, Liapis.

The Head of Mission is a member of the Board of Directors. Kostas Violitzis, coach Giorgos Zaravinas, Giorgos Mastorogiannis, doctor Thanasis Koutis, physiotherapist Pavlos Kalavazis and reflexologist Spyros Dimitrakoulas.

Bukovina: “Ready for a new beginning”

On OCHE’s official website, Petros Bukovinas spoke about the premiere of the EURO 2024 qualifier, which is a new challenge for the representative group.

The goalkeeper of the German Großwallstad was integrated into the national team’s mission during the stay in Thessaloniki and did not hide his joy at the return to his homeland. “Every time it’s time to rally around the national team, we all rejoice because we’re going to fight back and work together. That’s what we’ve built over the past few years and that’s what we’re going to fight for, the importance of the team.”explained …

It’s important for Petros Bukovina that the national team can play against all opponents now and that should show in the qualifying group against Croatia, Holland and Belgium. “We don’t go into Europe qualifiers with a higher score than we did in the previous world qualifiers. And that’s because the wins we had were nice, but in the end we didn’t qualify. We were injured and disappointed with the exclusion from Montenegro.” But now we are ready for a fresh start. We want to get what we deserve, look at each game individually with its difficulties. The team has earned the right and the confidence to look any opponent in the eye. We managed to believe in ourselves. We know that if we are steadfast and keep our standards high, we can claim something.emphasized the national goalkeeper.

According to Bukovina, what the national team needs is competitive stability. As he points out “To be in the game against the Croatians we have to play the perfect game. We’ve seen Croatia’s calls, they’re loaded with all their guns and it shows that after our recent results and because it’s the start, the Croats are on us counting.” the group. We have to be serious and disciplined in our game and keep our mistakes to a minimum. Croatians play aggressive defense, so we shouldn’t give them easy balls and surprises. This margin of error helped us improve our level in the group in the last World Qualifiers”.