For the second yr in a row, the Norwegian super-project Kolstad IL has failed to succeed in the knockout stage of the EHF Champions League. Initially hailed as a game-changer in European handball, a Norwegian counterpart to bold northern European tasks like Aalborg and GOG, and a method to construct a group consisted of home gamers with well-known home coach, the Trondheim-based group was fast-tracked into the highest European competitors. Bear in mind, it was given a spot forward of golf equipment like Dinamo Bucharest, Kadetten Schaffhausen, and Celje Pivovarna Laško.
Nonetheless, in simply two years, Kolstad has successfully collapsed and failed the check. The EHF’s determination to grant the Norwegian membership a Champions League spot—regardless of having no historical past or ensures—was a transparent sign of goodwill and an try to interact with the market of Europe’s wealthiest nation. However goodwill alone isn’t sufficient…
A couple of weeks in the past, Sander Sagosen admitted in an interview that he had been “naïve” when discussing his transfer from German powerhouse THW Kiel again to his homeland. Sagosen, the most effective handball gamers of the previous decade, typically talked about in the identical breath as Karabatić, Hansen, Landin, and Mem, has suffered a big decline in each outcomes and type which affected additionally nationwide group efficiency. His escape from Kolstad to Aalborg seems to be the one method to get again on observe because the world’s No. 1 participant. Different high Norwegian gamers, reminiscent of Bergerud and Rød have made the identical determination, to go away the mission.
However Sagosen isn’t the one “sufferer” of Norway’s unusual method to handball or the game’s failure to ascertain a sustainable mannequin. The three-time EHF Champions League-winning girls’s membership, Vipers Kristiansand, as soon as full of among the largest names in girls’s handball—together with Norwegian stars—has disappeared fully. The membership went bankrupt.
Even Katrine Lunde, a sporting icon, a nationwide treasure, and one of many biggest goalkeepers in handball historical past, has been left with out a membership in her personal nation. Simply 4 months after successful Olympic gold in Paris, she immediately finds herself with out a place in Norway’s handball system. A brutal actuality. Appears like a foul joke. She needed to go to Denmark, identical to Sander.
All of that is occurring within the richest nation in Europe. A nation recognized for sporting success. A spot the place guidelines supposedly guarantee stability. And but, each Sander and Katrine have been pressured to go away.
How? Why?
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