Unfortunately for 37-year-old Weber could not leave immediately from Bregenz to Berlin, but had to go back to Greece before. Since summer 2022, the All-time top scorer of the Austrian national team and one of the all-time German Bundesliga top scorers was playing in Piraeus. “I arrived at the airport of Athens, took a taxi to my flat in the city, had exactly 40 minutes to pack the most important things in my back - and then went straight back to Athens airport to catch the plane to Berlin.” There, Stefan Kretzschmar was waiting for him. "It was very late in the evening, so I was able to congratulate him on his 50th birthday at midnight," says Weber. In his honour, Weber also wears Kretzschmar’s old number 73 for Füchse now. "Stefan kicked-off my career, when he had signed me for Magdeburg in 2009, and now he's giving me a second life. We've come full circle.”
Three days after his hectic departure from Piraeus, Weber appeared on the court for the first time in the Füchse jersey and contributed five strikes to the 29:25 Bundesliga home win against HSG Wetzlar and was enthusiastic about the reception of the fans, "It was overwhelming. It's fantastic to be back in the Bundesliga."
Weber hadn't expected to receive such a warm welcome by the Berlin audience, "It's true that I wasn't the most popular player here in Berlin. But I'm trying to reverse that," the left-hander alludes to his sporting past, which was with SC Magdeburg for ten years, and both clubs definitely don't have any kind of fan friendship.
From 2009 to 2019, Weber scored a sensational 1,944 goals for Magdeburg in the Bundesliga alone, in the 2014/15 season he became the HBL top scorer with an outstanding 271 goals. A year later he won the German Cup with SCM, in 2019 he joined HSG Nordhorn-Lingen before the Austrian moved to Greek second division club Olympiacos Piraeus in the summer of 2022.
Now Weber is back. “The whole team, the staff and the whole club's made it so easy for me to fit in immediately. Right at the start, I was a bit nervous to be back in Bundesliga, but since the first match, I do what they have signed me for: scoring eight, nine goals per match,” says Weber. In five European League matches, he netted 28 times, in six Bundesliga matches, he scored 37 goals. “I am really happy with the way I play, I am on my old level and maybe even above, and I am really happy to be at a club like Berlin.”
His happiness was shattered this Tuesday in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. After Berlin made a new European League record - winning 12 matches from the start of the group phase until the end of the play-offs - Füchse were defeated for the first time, losing 33:37 at Kadetten in the first leg of the quarter-finals.
“This defeat really hurts, as we know that normally we are the better team. We did not take the match serious enough, we had big problems in defence, proved by conceding an incredible number of 37 goals. And if you cause so many technical mistakes in attack like we did in the second half, when we were close to turn the match around, you cannot win against any opponent. Though Kadetten had a perfect day, we simply beat ourselves on our own,” says Weber, praising his former Austrian national teammate Kristian Pilipovic, who has now changed his citizenship to Croatian, “Pipo was outstanding, like a wall.”
But still Weber and Füchse are optimistic of making it to the EHF Finals, knowing that Berlin are experts in turning big deficits around - like in the 2011/12 Champions League quarter-finals against Valladolid, when they turned an 11-goal defeat into a ticket to the EHF FINAL4 in Cologne. Then a few years later they turned an 8-goal deficit against Nexe in the EHF Cup quarter-finals 2017/18 into a ticket to the EHF Finals.
“Four goals are not that much in handball, we can make it, if we play 100 percent in the second leg. I am sure that even more fans will come to support us after the result in the first leg. Backed by them our foxes’ den hopefully will be a invulnerable fortress. Our big goals is making it to the EHF Finals in Flensburg, and it is our great advantage not to have any Bundesliga match between the two legs of the quarter-finals”, says Weber, adding, “It will all be a matter of mindset, and we have to be much more emotional on the court. We must burn like a fire. I really hope that this match at Schaffhausen was something like a wake-up call for us for the rest of the season, in European League and Bundesliga.”
In the German league, Füchse are top of the table, level with THW Kiel, so a first qualification for the EHF Champions League since the 2013/14 season is the second major goal of the capital club. “The season only lasts for nine more weeks, we have built a brilliant base in both competitions, and now we are eagerly fighting to reach our goals. I am sure that we have the quality to bring in the harvest.”
After starting the season in the Greek second division, an ending on top of the Bundesliga with a ticket for the EHF Finals in Flensburg at the end of May would be much more than only the icing on the cake for the Austrian veteran.
