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About a year ago, Germany was a hockey nation. At the Winter Games in Pyeongchang in February, the German team played in the Olympic endgame, strangers in Germany met early in pubs for public viewing, threw with names such as Dominik Kahoun, Danny from the birches and Patrick Reimer around them, as if they were old Known. The captain Christian Ehrhoff was omnipresent in the media, the hockey players so near, sympathetic, honest workers. The counterpoint to football.

The Christian Ehrhoff 2019 is called Uwe Gensheimer, the ice hockey players are now handball players, otherwise everything repeats itself. The same attributes, the same hope that such a success triggers a boom in the sport, the same silly comparisons with football.

And again, the question arises: to what extent can handball benefit from public sympathy, how sustainable is such a tournament? What is left of the World Cup? You do not have to rob big illusions when you say: not much. It would be an exaggeration to assert that in Germany one year after the euphoric appearance of the DEB team in Pyeonchang, 80 million people are now running their hockey sticks in their hands.

Handbal l-WM was conveniently located

A tournament is a tournament is a tournament. A time limited to two or three weeks event, in this case, even very conveniently located at the beginning of the year, when the football returns slowly from the winter. The football transfer window of the winter break is not even closed, there is no football Champions League, not a DFB Cup. The handball players had to compete on television at most with biathlon and the streak.

This has brought the sport attention, with the sporting success, the players have used this. It also needs it, then the German audience can also inspire - not only by handball players, but also beach volleyball players as well as decathletes. Or ice hockey players. ARD and ZDF at least will probably not ignore the handball tournaments in the future as disgusting as they had done in the past. This can be Quote.

The presence on TV - that is what the handballers probably do the best. But that would also mean that the Bundesliga, the Final Four, the Champions League would take place on a big TV stage. One should not expect the exuberant boom, because after all, the young people do not come to the biathlon in droves, just because it is constantly on TV. But the sport would remain in public memory if Uwe Gensheimer, Fabian Wiede and Andreas Wolff appeared in other months than January.

Keeping sports on public radar is very difficult. The athletes have been dealing with this topic for many years, the swimmers, the gymnasts. For two or three weeks a year, the Schweinwerfer focus on them, then the Germans noticed immediately, what likeable potential in competitive sports but is the TV community gets a good conscience when they cheer the industrious autograph handball players to cheer. After that, the next big story about Franck Ribéry will be waiting again.

The "Münchner Merkur" wrote a bit spitefully, probably only the shouting sweaters of DHB Vice President Bob Hanning were remembered from the World Cup. This is already a beginning.