Hockey EM: ​​Hockey women need “great moment” – world title for men a burden?

The European Hockey Championship for women and men starts in Mönchengladbach on Friday. The national coaches Valentin Altenburg and André Henning on the starting positions of their teams.

sports show: For the men’s national hockey team, the “Honamas”, the EM is the second tournament highlight this year. In January you, André Henning, sensationally became world champion with the German hockey men. For the first time in 17 years. Wears you this title or is it also a burden?

Andre Henning: It can be a burden in that after many years, a lot of investment and a lot of energy, we have now achieved an incredibly big goal. This goal makes you satisfied, but also relaxed in the best sense of the word.

Before, the team was incredibly easy to motivate. It is very helpful for our process that the EM takes place at home. You can feel that there is euphoria in the team. But a few things were definitely easier for us before the World Cup than they are now. But we don’t see the title as pressure.

sports show: As a coach, did you do anything differently in preparation?

Henning: I let go and deliberately left the boys alone, which of course isn’t easy for a national coach. Ultimately, in our decentralized system, the majority of the success of our national teams is based on daily training at home and thus on self-motivation and self-discipline. We gave the guys time to recover mentally and physically.

sports show: Valentin Altenburg, your team, the women’s national team, has shown strong development recently, but so far there has been no success. The last title of the “Danas” was already ten years ago with the European Championship 2013. Where’s the reward?

Valentin Altenburg: We started last year winning knockout games, playing evenly against top teams and understanding what it takes to beat them. Since then, I’ve felt a great longing from the middle of the team to be at the top. From this dream we have derived concrete goals for ourselves over the last year, so that the longing does not remain a pipe dream.

We look at ourselves, don’t get distracted and do our thing. The team grew very strong there. The world class is represented here. We will need absolute world-class performances, real great moments, to be at the top.

sports show: You are both coaches who rely on personal responsibility and a lot of autonomy in their teams. What makes your teams special?

Altenburg: Striving to get to the top, even now at the European Championship. The players themselves take on a lot of responsibility for success, have set their own standards and know exactly what they want. This team can play really good offensive hockey and be successful at it.

And next to the pitch, there is a team that is committed to sustainability in a wide variety of ways. Be it that they strive for CO2 flight compensation by planting trees in their own forest or that no plastic is used unnecessarily within the team. The team also has a great need to inspire a new generation for women’s hockey.

Henning: There is an incredibly heterogeneous mix of personalities and we definitely want to serve and make use of it. We have a lot of different intelligences in the team. I think that’s one of our biggest advantages over the competition: in addition to game intelligence, we have blatant emotional and social skills in this team. So we not only have hockey experts, but also experts for communication or cooperation in the team. Accordingly, the team is involved in many decision-making processes. In addition to the pitch, she decides a lot, on the pitch everything.

Playfully, it’s a crunchtime team. That’s mental strength. There’s a core tenet for us: our worst day and worst game always ends in at least a draw and then we win a penalty shootout.

sports show: A total of eight teams play for the respective title at the European Championship. Who do you think are the strongest opponents?

Altenburg: In our group there’s Ireland as runners-up with an unorthodox style of play and the team from England, which has unbelievable fighting spirit and quality. Both teams, as well as Scotland, want to counterattack with defensive compactness.

The other group has a great playing and offensive quality with the Netherlands and Belgium. The Dutch are by far the favorite for the title. But the teams are all so good that we need a great moment.

Henning: The Netherlands are currently the strongest team. It is common for Dutch teams to play very offensive, very technical hockey. But under their new staff they have become much more “German” in their playing style. That means they play more disciplined and make fewer mistakes. Accordingly, they are really difficult to crack.

Belgium is probably the best team in the overall package. They are super experienced and have been playing at a top level for ten years. They will be very hungry again, especially now after not winning the World Cup.

The team that has just made the steepest climb is England. I think if we hadn’t turned the match against England in the quarter-finals of the World Cup, they would have been a good contender for a title too. But Spain also have a young team to be reckoned with. It will be an exciting tournament: every semi-final could be a potential Olympic final.

sports show: How will Germany become European champions at the home tournament?

Altenburg: If we look at the past or the statistics, then we won’t be European champions. We got rid of that. We will work to enforce our game and will replay every game. We can surprise ourselves and others. We’re well-rehearsed and we’ll take action as soon as we get a chance. I believe this team can win any game against any team.

Henning: Our team is very diverse. We don’t depend on the form of two or three players on the day, we can catch each other. In many respects we are a very flexible and variable team and are accordingly able to react.

The team has been showing again and again for years what an incredible quality it has. It was never a problem of poor hockey quality before it worked out with the world title. We’ve now shown that when the mix of hockey quality and competitive stability come together on the same day, we’re tough to beat.