Pandzic: “It’s like having wings”

Indeed, it has been a dream for Slovenia, who are sure to record their best EHF EURO ranking in history. The team have lost only two matches in the entire tournament, against Tokyo 2020 semi-finalists Sweden and defending EHF EURO title holders Norway. On Monday night, they took their narrowest loss to Norway in almost 20 years, and their second narrowest ever against the Scandinavian powerhouse. Considering Slovenia have not ranked inside the top 10 at any major championship since 2004, this is no small feat.

“It was a tough game over 60 minutes. From the morning, when we woke up, I think there was this team spirit — this fighting team spirit. We really wanted to play good against them. It’s Norway. I mean, they have really good players and they’re all the time on the top of the European championship or any championship,” said Zulic.

“We never played against them like that. They needed to play 60 minutes with us to win. From one side I’m really proud. From the other side, it’s a little bit bitter because we lost. But what can I say…this is important. We are going forward. In two days, we have a new game against Hungary and we are going 100 per cent.”

Slovenia remain in the semi-final race, but their fate does not depend only on their own results.

“We really hoped to get some points today,” said goalkeeper Amra Pandzic following the Norway game. “It would help us a lot and we wouldn’t depend on somebody else, but it is how it is. Now we will hope that luck will be on our side and somebody loses the points. We should get them, but we need to focus on our match against Hungary and do our best and not make any mistakes there.”

Pandzic left her mark on the match against Norway through the opening minutes, helping Slovenia pull ahead to a 6:3 lead after 10 minutes. Playing in front of a record crowd for the Slovenia women’s national team, Pandzic clearly fed off the energy in Arena Stozice.

“It’s really crazy. I can’t describe that. It’s like having wings and these wings start to fly and take you to the sky,” said Pandzic of playing with such support. “It’s really nice to have support, especially when it’s going bad. Like, when you have some bad moments and you do something good and it just gives you more and more energy. I’m really grateful to live this experience.”

Prior to throw-off at the EHF EURO 2022, Zulic spoke about her team’s history of pulling off one big win in the preliminary rounds at several events, before bowing out. Over the past years Slovenia have beaten teams that went on to win the title at two different events — France at the 2017 World Championship and the Netherlands at the 2019 World Championship — plus they defeated runners-up Russia at the EHF EURO 2018.

Zulic said that Slovenia wanted to play well through the championship, and not be satisfied with only one good game. They have certainly achieved that goal and showed more consistency than ever before for this generation, although Zulic would have liked to take no losses.

“Of course, I would say that I would win every game, but it’s not going like that. We wanted to not just win one game. And this is the point, that we show that we can do it — we can play with every opponent,” said Zulic after the Norway game, reflecting on the EURO campaign overall.

“With Sweden, it was, at half-time, just one or two goals and now the same. It’s something that we know that we are doing good and we can play with the best national teams in the world and we will keep going,” Zulic said.

And with that, I hope that because this is going on here in Slovenia, that a lot of young girls will go and start to play handball because I believe this is a great sport and the most beautiful sport for me. I hope they will start with handball and the Slovenian handball will go just higher and higher.

“The Slovenian country and the Slovenian people, they really like sport. They like sport but we have a lot of individuals — in skiing or whatever, and they are really good. It never happened like that for a team, especially a women’s team, that we would have that many people to support us. It is like, wow, just great. And like I said, I am so happy that I could experience this at home and I hope that they will come to support us against Hungary.”