Dagur Sigurdsson made the headlines at the end of February after the announcement that he would take over as head coach for the national men’s team of Croatia. This new challenge comes with many hopes and dreams, as well as with a lot of pressure from the handball fans. After a few years of disappointment, including finishing the EHF EURO 2024 in 11th place, the Croatians are looking forward to a new era.
A former player himself, Dagur Sigurdsson continued his handball career as a coach for various national and club teams, including Austria, Füchse Berlin, Germany and Japan. His latest stint as a coach in Asia started in 2017, which gave him the opportunity to establish a new and successful team.
“It’s a really exciting part of the world to coach handball because they approach it in a little bit different way so it was vital for me to have the experience as a player there,” says Sigurdsson. His approach was an interesting one, focusing on growing young talents: “We were taking 17-18 year old players in the beginning and giving them four-five years to gain the experience to play against foreign players and to play with the national team.”
Asked about his plans for the Croatian national team, Sigurdsson prefers to take things step by step. “Before I start to look at the future for the Croatian team we are just looking at the next two weeks and I think the team will play and look very similar to what they did then [at the EHF EURO 2024].” He is aware that success may not come as quickly as desired, but he is willing to do the best he can to bring improvements to the team. “It’ll be my job to find the right mixture of players and find the right system to play and help them in any way,” adds the Icelandic coach.
After spending his last years in Japan, Sigurdsson was filled with excitement when he received the offer from Croatia. “I was looking for passion”, he said, then added: “After being in Japan for such a long time, it’s a different kind of mentality there, it’s very polite. You don’t have this passion for sports like we have here in Europe. And Croatia is at the top of the pile in passion. Immediately when I heard that Croatia were interested I was willing to do anything to join them.”
At the moment, Sigurdsson’s focus is on the first matches with his new team. This year’s EHF EURO 2024 showed that the competition is tight and Croatia’s head coach acknowledges that: “The competition from fourth place to 12th or 13th or 14th is huge and you have teams there like Norway, Iceland, Hungary, now Spain who must fight their way back, it’s a really hard competition”.
If you want to find out more about coaching in Asia and what plans Dagur Sigurdsson has for the future, you can check out the latest episode here:
Main photo © Croatian Handball Federation head coach
