Greece take big steps to return to the elite

The Hellenic Handball Federation (OXE) has designed a new three-year programme, tailor-made to bring Greece back on the biggest stages of world handball.

While the Greece senior women’s team have failed to secure a berth at the IHF Women’s World Championship, taking part only in the Olympic Games Athens 2004 where they finished 10th, the men’s team had a successful period around the same time, earning a surprising sixth place at the IHF Men’s World Championship in 2005.

However, since that performance, Greece have failed to qualify for a major tournament and have struggled to gain some traction, despite finding success at club level, where AEK Athens HC secured the EHF European Cup Men in the 2020/21 season, after losing the final of the EHF Challenge Cup Men in the 2017/18 season.

However, the ambitions are high, as highlighted by the bid put in to co-host the IHF Men’s Junior (U21) World Championship in 2023 alongside Germany. With Greece trying to get back to the top, OXE have contacted the IHF, with Guy Petitgirard lending a hand.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, OXE, who celebrated the 45th anniversary of the first handball event in Greece this week, went on with a plan to reform Greek handball. It was voted on in September 2021 by the stakeholders, including the clubs who are actively taking part in the development of young players, capable of bringing back Greece in the fold. Therefore, the 2021-2024 handball development programme in Greece was born, which has already seen moderate results in a few months.

Under the supervision of Petitgirard, who studied the development of Greek handball and created the new programme, two heads of development, Giorgos Kranakis as head coordinator for Southern Greece and Costas Alexiadis as head coordinator for Northern Greece, have been trying to set everything in motion.

“The response of the sport family to this new endeavour is impressive. Hundreds of children, the future of the sport, are evaluated and will be helped on the field to make their handball dreams come true. Already 500 young athletes participate in the selection teams throughout Greece,” said Konstantinos Gkandis, the president of the Hellenic Handball Federation.

Initially, 500 young players were selected from the Under 13 and Under 14 categories and were subject to fitness tests, analysed by the Greek Sport Excellence programme. Subsequently, a new database for players has been created, including all the data for the selected players, measuring the development of the athletes.

Two new handball centres will be created, one for Northern Greece and the other for Southern Greece, where players will join, in order to increase the volume of targeted individual training, in order to develop their future. According to OXE, players aged 16 will then join the training centres, where they will have tailor-made training sessions in order to improve.

This is only one of the four pillars which will develop Greek handball, according to OXE. The programme designed by Guy Petitgirard has three more main focuses, including the increase of the number of clubs which will subsequently lead to the increase in the number of handball players. The other two are identifying young players with the proper skills and physical characteristics for handball and the continuous improvement of those already selected.

Up until this point, 41 clubs from 22 cities have already joined the programme, with over 500 players being selected and monitored. In December 2021, over 390 players were part of tournaments held in three different cities, Portaria Pelion, Aigio and Salamina, with more tournaments scheduled for March and April.

“We invested in the reorganisation of development in order to bring Greek handball closer to the world elite in a few years. The cooperation of the last two years with the French strategic advisor, Guy Petitgirard, brought the new development programme of the sport,” concluded Gkandis.

Images: Hellenic Handball Federation