The praise came from qualified sources.

"The Rhein-Neckar Löwen have matured into a top team again," said Filip Jicha.

The coach of THW Kiel seemed pleased that the old rival is back - but of course even more that his team had defeated the lions in the top game of the Handball Bundesliga on Sunday afternoon 32:29.

After a strong first half, the team of the new coach Sebastian Hinze failed at Kiel goalkeeper Niklas Landin.

The Dane fended off 16 shots and gave the Mannheimers their first defeat of the season.

Nevertheless, Hinze seemed satisfied: "We played a great game, but left too many free balls."

Patrick Groetzki agreed with the positive view: “We are on the right track.

We try to play our game against each opponent for 60 minutes.

We have the feeling again that we can win against everyone," said the right winger, who has been playing for the lions for 15 years.

Transition becomes a crisis

Last season they had shrunk to kittens.

17 defeats, including embarrassing bankruptcies, no coaching handwriting, a season to forget: the poor squad planning of the past few years took revenge and the Mannheim team fell to tenth place.

That was more than a warning for the 2016 and 2017 champion.

Actually, the 2021/22 season should have been a transitional year before the new head coach would take over.

This turned into a serious crisis.

Hinze had already given his commitment for the summer of 2022 in spring 2021 - after ten years as coach of Bergisches HC.

With him, experimenting on the bench should come to an end;

that is the plan of managing director Jennifer Kettemann.

Because since the departure of master coach Nikolaj Jacobsen, little has worked together, which was also due to the trainer's mistakes that Kettemann and sports coordinator Oliver Roggisch made.

Roggisch came under pressure, because the Lions were no longer among the top teams in terms of squad strength – despite their budget, which is one of the highest in the league.

The main critic of the grievance was their longtime "brain", the Swiss playmaker Andy Schmid.

It crunched with dissatisfaction.

Despite the defeat in the duel with Kiel: For the time being, the plan with Hinze seems to have worked: Seven wins from the first seven games up to Sunday, including the 28:27 against SG Flensburg and a high-speed handball that the league rarely saw.

New trademark

That's the way: "We didn't have enough players who could initiate the tempo game from defense and follow along," says Hinze.

So he got Olle Forsell Schefvert and Halil Jaganjac for the center back.

Both can play in front and behind, drive the game - which has become indispensable due to the new throwing rule, which makes handball even faster.

There is a lot going on in the end about national player Jannik Kohlbacher on the circle, rather little about the well-known wing tongs Groetzki and Gensheimer.

In Kiel, Hinzes Sieben showed this new trademark a few times;

THW couldn't keep up.

Hinze gave another reason why the lions are pushing the pace so much – “compared to the absolute top teams, we still lack the individual quality in positional attack,” he says.

At first there was little to see in the sold-out arena.

On the one hand, Andy Schmid's successor, Juri Knorr, steered the game courageously and prudently, on the other hand, the backcourt players did score goals - albeit mostly in breakthrough, not from ten or eleven meters.

For 30 minutes, the lions gave the impression of knowing exactly what to do to annoy the record champions.

They were leading 16:12 in the 21st minute.

Joel Birlehm in goal saved shots from all positions, and if Uwe Gensheimer hadn't failed at Landin four times, the south-west Germans would have ordered silence in the hall.

But THW came in the well-known manner to 18:18 at halftime, which the fans appreciated, albeit less enthusiastically than the detail just before the throw-in, when the club announced the contract with the in-form defense chief Patrick Wiencek (33) until 2025 to have extended.

The fact that the jubilation was all the greater at the end was due to Landin, Eric Johannson's nine goals and Rhein-Neckar Löwen, who lost their pace.

Nevertheless, they were mostly able to get good things out of the afternoon: "We lost, but the way we present ourselves makes it all right," said Patrick Groetzki, referring to the present and the future: The pillars are under long-term contract, the coach enjoys trust, and a five-year plan has been rolled out, at the end of which there should be the championship again.