Handball: Prokop focuses on home World Cup:”Must join forces”.

Handball national coach Christian Prokop has concluded with the reappraisal of the disappointing European Championship and has put the focus on the next major event.

“We have one goal: to create an optimal preparation for the home World Cup. We’re all pulling in the same direction,”said the 39-year-old on Thursday before the Bundesliga match between record champion THW Kiel and MT Melsungen at Sky:” We have to join forces so that we can achieve a successful World Cup at home.

Last week the German Handball Federation decided to hold onto Prokop despite the disappointing ninth place in Croatia in January. The decision was preceded by a week-long internal analysis of the association, in which atmospheric disturbances were discussed between the coach and the team.

Prokop now admitted mistakes,”especially with regard to the cadre composition”. At the same time, he had to “concede that I had not been able to establish a hierarchy beforehand that supported us together and led to open and honest communication before everything else.”

This “led to small differences, differences of opinion, and we did not manage that together. But we want to learn from this and quickly make it better,”Prokop continued.

In the meantime, Prokop had spoken to team councillor and captain Uwe Gensheimer:”They were very open and honest discussions, because the feedback from the team is close to my heart. I have a good feeling from the talks,”said the coach.

There had been rumours recently that some players were thinking of resigning from the national team after holding onto Prokop. Axel Kromer, member of the DHB’s Board of Management responsible for Sport, is not worried about this,”We do not anticipate resignations. We hope and assume that everyone will come,”he said. The next international matches will take place at the beginning of April in Leipzig and Dortmund, each time against Serbia.