Bundesliga – handball: The masterpiece of the Foxes Berlin

On Sunday afternoon around half past two, it didn’t need a scoreboard to guess the result. A look at the face of Stefan Kretzschmar was enough. The sports director of the Füchse Berlin fidgeted in his seat in the grandstand of the Mannheim arena and didn’t really want to believe what happened in front of his eyes.

Operation without anesthesia

The Berliners played their maybe weakest half of the season. The team that last lost a game in the Bundesliga on December 16, 2024 seemed treading, unconcentrated, nervous – and threatened to give up the long -awaited first championship in club history in the last few meters. In front of 13,000 spectators, the Berliners were back against the Rhein-Neckar Löwen at the break. Would the foxes, which had been swept across national and international competition in the past few weeks and months, actually show nerves?

“The first 30 minutes felt like an operation on the wisdom teeth – without anesthetic,” Berlin’s managing director Bob Hanning later said: “The tension was literally felt.” In the end, the operation title was still successful. Thanks to an enormous increase in performance in half -time two, the Berliners successfully brought their lead from one point to the worst adversary SC Magdeburg via the finish line. It was 38:32 against the Rhein-Neckar Löwen, who said goodbye to their long-time coach Sebastian Hinze and playmaker Juri Knorr in front of a sold-out backdrop and, not least because of this, and not least because of this as a maximum of unpleasant opponents. “Usually, in a moment like this excessive joy, the basic feeling should be. But it is a mixture of satisfaction, relief and joy, because today there has been an incredible amount of pressure from us, “said Kretzschmar:” I am extremely proud of the club, the team and how it solved it again today. “

Offensive as a trump

The game on Pentecost Sunday was symbolized for the entire Berlin season because they once again illustrated the greatest strengths of the foxes: incredible attack powers, paired at an extremely high pace over 60 minutes and the fact that the team remains cool even in critical phases. On average, the team of coach Jaron Siewert achieved 35.2 goals per game and thus refuted the truism that the offensive games wins, but the defensive championships.

Almost a quarter of the 1197 Berlin goals went to the account of the all -out player of the season, Mathias Gidsel. In Mannheim the Danish world champion was the best Berlin thrower with ten goals again. However, anyone who reduces the success of the foxes on Gidsel and its individual skills alone does not do justice to the Berliners. In the course of the season, they regularly provided evidence of being a team that has grown over the years that has survived countless printing situations together and has emerged.

The mixture does it

“We have a damn good mix in the team,” says Kretzschmar. In addition to top international players such as Gidsel, goalkeeper Dejan Milosavljev, captain Max Darj or back room shooter Lasse Andersson, there are also five self-trained handball players in the squad, who won the World Cup title two years ago with the U21 national team and are now wearing load-bearing roles in the club. With no other German club, the permeability between young and professional team is as high as with the foxes. For this, Tim Freihöfer and Nils Lichtlein are examples. Freihöfer, like Gidsel, brings it to more than 200 goals and is the discovery of the season on the left wing. Lichtlein is preparing to compete with the best German player of the present: quite a few experts see an even better middle man in the 22-year-old than in Knorr.

Fittingly, the ensemble is orchestrated by a genuine Berliner: coach Jaron Siewert already wore the foxes jersey in the D-youth and has been the youngest master coach in the history of the Bundesliga since Sunday. “I am really completely empty today because the game asked everything from us again,” said Siewert, who was awarded the last home game against Gummersbach as “coach of the year”.

The next title

After the master shell was handed over, the foxes went back home in the evening. To celebrate the day, Hanning organized a charter plane who brought the team to Berlin as quickly as possible. Around 2000 fans were already waiting on the bathing ship on the Spree, who had previously followed the masterpiece on large screen screens. “We will celebrate really hard today,” announced Kretzschmar. The Berliners can finish their historical season next weekend: Then compete in the Final Four in Cologne and play for the title in the Champions League. In terms of the performance of the past few months, it is not a daring forecast to count the foxes among the favorites.