Sport rarely has time for great sentimentality - and handball certainly not at all: keep going, keep going.

And so in the days before the two friendlies against Hungary this weekend (Saturday, 4.15 p.m., in Gummersbach and Sunday, 5.15 p.m., in Kassel, both at Sport 1), the farewell of a great was no longer a big issue.

A national team without Patrick Wiencek is still a strange idea.

Many fans had given their hearts to this Wiencek, the embodiment of resolute defense and thus also German handball quality work.

Christian Kamp

sports editor.

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The fact that he is also an extremely pleasant fellow, downright gentle off the pitch, helped a bit.

Somehow a guy like you and me, although (or precisely because?) 117 kilos of fighting weight are spread over two meters in altitude.

Wiencek himself said that he was amazed at the many reactions to his retirement almost two weeks ago, at the age of 33 and after 159 international matches, that children had reported and written that he was the reason why they started handball.

But it has to go on.

And so Axel Kromer, the sports director of the German Handball Federation (DHB), didn't seem to want to dwell on the past for so long when he was asked about Wiencek at the beginning of the week.

He praised the man from THW Kiel as a "complete handball player", praised his "personality", which also helped the team to cope with the Corona plague at the European Championships in January.

But he said something else: "We are also happy that we have many alternatives in the district, which above all show their quality in attack and in the perception of many also have advantages over Patrick."

A new foundation

In fact, the European Championship was no longer an absolute reference tournament for Wiencek.

One seemed to notice that the battered body was no longer always up to the last centimetre, as the head might want, which also earned him one or the other time penalty too much for him, who always acts close to the limit.

That was completely different at the home World Cup in 2019, when he and his Kiel buddy Hendrik Pekeler were considered the world's best defensive duo.

Now it has to go without both: Pekeler already renounced the last European tournament.

If German handball wants to "reach for something higher" in the medium term, as Kromer put it, if possible at the home European Championship in two years, then a new foundation is needed.

National coach Alfred Gislason is working on that these days.

Defensive variants and defensive formations are high on the agenda: "That's one of our biggest tasks." When the Germans were still getting used to the European Championship with Wiencek, the new captain Johannes Golla took over the role of chief of defense full of conviction and charisma.

He will be the rock on which the national coach builds.

Otherwise, Gislason sees an “important role” for Simon Ernst from Leipzig, albeit one that needs optimization: in coordination, as Golla said, but also in appearance overall.

Co-trainer Erik Wudtke wishes Ernst "a lot more emotionality" and hopes that now that the rouser Wiencek is no longer there, there might be new space for it.

Gislason went through the other candidates again on Friday: Sebastian Heymann, who canceled this time like Djibril M'Bengue, Philipp Weber and Kai Häfner, Julian Köster, who had just turned 22, who made an impression at the EM as a brave driver and himself Tim Zechel, who is there for the first time, and his Erlangen teammate Sebastian Firnhaber see "long-term" as a man for the inner block.

Sounds like some choice at first, but only to a limited extent with Gislason: "There aren't too many more names than these in the Bundesliga with a German passport," growled the national coach.

On top of that, he would prefer to have players who are convincing both at the back and at the front. Changes of specialist are out of date for him.

In any case, there will no longer be a solid and irrefutable duo like Pekeler and Wiencek for the time being.

"We can't replace what we had before one-for-one," says Gislason.

In April, at the first World Cup play-off against the Faroe Islands in Kiel, Wiencek is to be said goodbye.

It is quite possible that it will be sentimental again.