Former international Stefan Kretzschmar has sharply criticised the reform plans of the Handball Champions League.He doesn’t think much of an elite league with twelve European top teams scheduled to start in 2019,”the gap between the big and the small is widening all the time,”Kretzschmar said at Sky.It could not be in the sense of handball that “big clubs are getting bigger and bigger.It’s a distortion of competition.”
The new concept, the framework conditions for which top clubs and the European umbrella organisation EHF have yet to reach a final agreement, provides for a single-track relay with twelve teams, for which the champions of the top international leagues will in principle qualify.From the relatively strong Bundesliga, the runners-up will probably also be entitled to start.At the end of the regular season, the top eight teams in the knockout system will then play out the title – the quarter-finals will be followed by the Final Four in Cologne, which will remain untouched in its current form.
“When Kiel receives eleven additional home games from such an elite league, the club’s budget and thus its distance to clubs such as Füchsen Berlin will increase many times over,”said Kretzschmar.National leagues must be strengthened,”said the former world-class left-winger.
The EHF did not want to comment on the topic at first on SID request, but invited to a press meeting on Sunday.Immediately before THW Kiel’s Champions League kick-off against the top favourite Paris St.Germain is to be informed about “plans for the new season”.Recently there had been repeated criticism of the current mode of the royal class.The Memorandum of Understanding, the agreement between EHF and top clubs on the current Champions League, runs until 2018.
“If you don’t want to let handball die slowly in Europe, you can only do so in a more attractive mode,”THW Managing Director Thorsten Storm told SID.Kiel’s coach Alfred Gislason had already suggested an elite league,”a kind of handball NBA”, and the top European players all want that.We will see a year-round European league in the next few years,”said Storm.