If the first game can go such a long way in helping a team feel they are on track for their goals or not, or identify what they need to improve, it is little surprise that coaching staff might choose to focus significant attention on that game in the preparation stage for a tournament.
Germany’s goalkeeper coach, former Sweden national team star Mattias Andersson, said his work with Andreas Wolff and David Späth was focused solely on round 1 in the later stages of the lead-up to the EURO: “We only focused on Switzerland, not the others.”
It is not an uncommon trend. Many teams concentrate far more attention on the opening game than what will follow in the preliminary round, especially when it comes to what is shared with the players.
“This first match, sometimes, is what you are going to do in the tournament. You lose this first match, sometimes after it is so difficult to win the others, reach the second phase, and if you are in the second phase without points, also it is difficult for the team to make something,” says Hungary coach Chema Rodriguez, whose team took the points against Montenegro in round 1 on Friday and will meet Serbia on Sunday in the competitive group C.
“When you play in the first match maybe with another team that you think that you can win more easily, sometimes you can prepare more for the others. But in our case, in our group, you need to focus all the time on the next match.”
Rodriguez is very familiar with the perils of a round 1 loss, as Hungary were defeated in their first game at the EHF EURO 2022, despite playing in a packed MVM Dome in Budapest that was almost entirely behind them. The team could never recover from that opening shock and ended up leaving the tournament at the end of the preliminary round after being seen as one of the potential medal favourites before the start. Now, Rodriguez has a different challenge: keep the team from becoming overconfident and focused on continuing their form.
“We need to go down a little bit and think that we almost made nothing. We have made the first match and after we have another two, and we need to win one to go to the other side. But I am lucky, I have guys who are so professional, so focused and they know everything. This morning [Saturday] we are preparing everything and they come like yesterday [Friday] is forgotten,” says Rodriguez.
Another factor related to the challenge of an opening match can be that the information at hand about an opponent is based on the past, and not necessarily how a team is playing right now or who will be their key performers, as Gille highlights: “There will always be a new player that’s good and that was not in the team a few months ago.”
Denmark had not met their round 1 opponents Czechia since 2018.
“You know that you play against a team with a lot of quality but still with a lot of unknown stuff, then it’s very, very difficult. I think you saw throughout the first matches that the favourites struggled a bit in the beginning. It didn’t surprise me that we also struggled a little bit in the beginning. I am just happy that we finished it better then we did in previous tournaments,” says Denmark back Rasmus Lauge.
Denmark’s assistant coach Kronberg comments: “You don’t know how they play, what are the physics, what are the strengths. You can look at the video, but it is not the same as being on the court. So that is why it’s so important in the first match to get the two points, to get the normal rhythm in a championship with only one day between the matches, and that’s normal.
“The first match is very special, and now is the normal rhythm and you know the players, you know the speed in the game, and then it’s more easy to play match number two and number three.”