“It feels like I just came home” – Simic enjoying life in Croatia

16 Jan. 2025

“It feels like I just came home” – Simic enjoying life in Croatia

The Icelandic coach of the Croatian men’s national handball team knows a thing or two about handball in Germany.

As a player, Dagur Sigurdsson spent a number of years in the European country playing and coaching in the top league (Bundesliga), before taking over as Germany men’s team coach and guiding them to Olympic and European medals.

And the 2015 IHF Coach of the Year used that knowledge to pluck line player Josip Simic from Bundesliga side VfL Potsdam and put him straight into his final squad of 16 for the Croatia co-hosted 2025 IHF Men’s World Championship.

On Wednesday (16 January), Simic, together with Ivano Pavlovic, made their competitive debuts for Croatia in a comprehensive 36:22 win over Bahrain in their preliminary group opener in Zagreb.

His competitive bow came after appearing in Croatia’s pre-championship friendly against Slovenia – after almost eight months of waiting.

“The first time I heard was through my coach in Potsdam, Germany,” said the 24-year-old to ihf.info about the initial approach from Sigurdsson.

“It was in May. This was the first time. It was just two days there (training) and then the next time was three or four months after that I also did not play, it was just two days training. But then, in December, it was the first time that I was planned also to play. I played the friendly game very good and I had a little feeling (I could make the squad) but I was not sure.

“Yesterday he (Dagur) told me I will play,” said Simic, beaming. “Then it was a very good feeling, and a little bit, the stress was gone – I'm feeling very great.”

In the game, Simic played for just under 21 minutes, scoring once, and was in no doubt about the deserved win, played out in front of well over 10,000 fans, nearly all of whom were supporting the home side.

“We are a strong team, but they are faster on the legs,” he said about Bahrain. “However, we countered this with a compact defence, and this was the solution. The atmosphere was perfect. But when I'm in the game, I'm not hearing the hall, so I can focus on myself and on the team, but it was a very great experience.”

For the player born to Croatian parents in Berlin and who has never lived in Croatia, there was never any doubt about which country he would play for, with the former left winger having also represented country at youth level when he played at the 2019 IHF Men’s Youth World Championship in North Macedonia.

But making your competitive debut in Zagreb at an IHF World Championship meant an extra thing to consider: tickets.

“A lot,” he says with a big smile when asked about how many ticket requests he received for the game. “I could manage just 12 tickets, so 12 people from my family came. It is a very great feeling. It's like home. Since I was born and when I first got to know some things, Croatia was my home, so it was a very great feeling. It feels just like I came home.”

Part of that feeling involves being welcomed into a squad setting and for Simic, it was completely natural.

“Joining the squad for the first time was also like I came home,” said the player, who is top-scorer for VfL Potsdam this season on 52 goals. “It was very familiar from the beginning and I felt it at the first moment (in May) very well.

“Everyone was good to me and told me ‘you have played a good season’, and that gives me a good feeling to come in to this team.”

While Croatia have seven men on court, their secret weapon is their eighth player – the fans, and with more than 15,000 expected for Croatia games going forward, Simic is in no doubt about what the team and their supporters can achieve together.

“With the fans and the atmosphere here, that's a very big plus for us,” says Simic, who joined VfL Potsdam’s youth team in 2016. “I believe that we can go very far; we just have to get in a flow and enjoy it; enjoy everything.”