Aged 37, the right winger of the Blues, one of the last three representatives of the generation of "Experts" with Nikola Karabatic and Michaël Guigou, ended his international career this summer with a significant record: three medals Olympic gold, three world titles and three Europeans.

"This is a very important page that is turning in my career as a handball player," said Luc Abalo at the press conference organized after his release from quarantine by his new club, Zeekstar Tokyo.

The Frenchman puts forward “a collective objective” with this young team, created only two years ago and which aims to win the Japanese Championship, of which it is currently third after twelve matches.

"I'm not someone who necessarily likes to shine or to set a lot of goals," said Abalo.

"The goal is to win all the matches we can."

Luc Abalo, here during his first match in Japan, says he is not there "to shine" individually but to win the Japanese Championship with his new team.

Charly TRIBALLEAU AFP

"Here, it's very serious," he told AFP after a training session concluded with a collective session of scrubbing the floor of the gymnasium to remove the residue of the resin used to make the ball more adherent.

"It laughs a bit during the warm-up but, afterwards, we feel that the guys are focused, invested. Frankly, they are working really well."

Compared to Iniesta

The player with 289 selections for the France team, says he wants to focus on the "transmission" to his Japanese teammates: "I want to bring my experience especially for difficult matches, in very hard times when that is not going to be played out much. "

For communication, he can rely on the interpreter employed by the club and on his new Franco-Japanese teammate Rémi-Anri Doi, who has worked for several years in Chambéry and Chartres under his French name, Rémi Feutrier, and has served as intermediary for Abalo's arrival in Tokyo.

"The players were excited because everyone knows Luc Abalo and we are all fans," says Doi, ex-captain of the Japanese national team, who compares the arrival of the French to that of footballer Andrés Iniesta, legend of FC Barcelona, in Kobe in 2018.

After training, the entire team rubs the gym floor to remove resin residue that players smear their fingers on for better ball grip.

Charly TRIBALLEAU AFP

With the arrival of an international star, the club leaders hope to promote handball, still confidential in Japan, where the players are most often employees of the companies that own the clubs.

"Japanese handball is still at an average level, as we saw at the Olympics", during which Japan finished 11th and penultimate, recognizes Tomoya Ohga, president of Zeekstar Tokyo.

"If we do not improve the individual level, we can not have a strong national team," he said.

"By hiring Luc Abalo, we hope to quickly level up" and, by doing so, "participate in the development of handball" in the Archipelago.

- "Present time" -

"In Japan, baseball, football and sumo are so-called major sports, which handball is not part of," explains Takahito Cho, journalist for SportsEvent Handball, the only Japanese magazine dedicated to this sport.

Luc Abalo celebrates his very first goal in the Japanese championship, on November 19 in Tokyo against Daido Steel.

Final score: 30-26 for Abalo's Zeekstar Tokyo.

Charly TRIBALLEAU AFP

He is delighted with the enthusiasm generated among fans by the arrival of Abalo.

The fact that he is in the same team as Rémi-Anri Doi "will allow a lot of people to know the sport", he adds.

Before Abalo, Stéphane Stoecklin and Frédéric Volle, two Frenchmen of the "Barjots" generation, had played in the Japanese championship at the turn of the 1990s-2000s.

Foreigners in the league had been mostly South Koreans for ten years, but "for the last three or four years there have been players starting to come from Europe," Cho says.

During his first match in the Japanese League, on November 19 at 7:00 p.m., under his fetish number 19 - "it's destiny", launches the president of the club -, Luc Abalo also faced the French Igor Anic, a crusader in the French team, and who joined Daido Steel from Nagoya this summer.

Final score: 30-26 for the Zeekstar.

Luc Abalo in his first Japanese league match on November 19, which his team Zeekstar Tokyo won 30-26 against Daido Steel from Nagoya.

Charly TRIBALLEAU AFP

Abalo does not rule out ending his career at this club, but "since the start of the Covid, I have learned not to project myself too much", he tempers.

"The present moment is the most important. The first few days here are great, and I only think day by day."

© 2021 AFP