Handball: Handball debate: HBL with only 14 clubs?

The conflict between professionals and officials over the overload in German handball is intensifying. Holger Glandorf, 2007 World Champion, as well as national player Patrick Wiencek have renewed the criticism from the players’ side and have presented suggestions for solutions.

“I don’t necessarily see the biggest problem in the time between the games, but rather in the summer break,” Glandorf told the world. Three weeks vacation are “much too little, in order to regenerate correctly”. Professional basketball players in the USA would play 80 to 90 games a season, “but they’ll have a three-month summer break.”

Kreisläufer Wiencek from THW Kiel can meanwhile imagine a “reduction of the league from 18 to 14 teams or a reduction in the number of Champions League group matches”. The 29-year-old explained this in the Sport Bild. He could “understand that some players are no longer interested in the Bundesliga”.

“Ten games less also means 30 percent less money. It would be too short-sighted to say it was wrongly organised,” Liga Managing Director Frank Bohmann replied via Sport Bild.

It is “always easy to blame the organizers. If the burden is too great for individual players, the squad must be increased and more time distributed.”

“The players are our greatest asset. This applies both to the clubs and to the national team,” DHB CEO Mark Schober told the SID on Wednesday: “The topic is highly complex because there are a large number of stakeholder groups with associations, clubs and players. The challenge is by no means new. We must continue the dialogue with all stakeholders.”

Wiencek’s Kiel team mate Hendrik Pekeler had put the discussion about the tight schedule in handball back on the agenda with a much quoted interview last week.

DHB President Andreas Michelmann then described the criticism of the officials as “nonsense”.