Bennet Wiegert, from winning player to winning coach

“We are not here to have fun, we are really here to compete,” said Wiegert on Friday at the media call, ahead of a crazy weekend for his club.

Despite his team coming to Cologne without his star Ómar Ingi Magnússon, Wiegert still felt like his players had a role to play at LANXESS arena.

“The boys have invested a lot throughout the season, and I knew they were not going to let it go. When you are at the EHF FINAL4, you don’t know when you are going to come back, so you have to fight like crazies,” Wiegert said after the final.

In the space of 24 hours, SCM managed to beat both title-holders Barça after a penalty shootout, and Kielce, last season’s finalists.

In Sunday’s final, Magdeburg managed to turn things around in a game that looked like it was going on the wrong tracks.

“This is the story of our season, basically. We managed to steal the momentum in the second half, to score two or three goals in a row and we were in it again,” explained Wiegert.

The German coach becomes the fifth former player to win the competition as a coach, after Filip Jicha, Talant Dujshebaev, Antonio Carlos Ortega and Roberto Garcia Parrondo.

“I can’t realise what is happening right now, but I am not going to forget it. It was a wonderful feeling back then, and it still is now,” he said.

Bennet Wiegert now has a lot of medals to place on his trophy shelf. The EHF FINAL4 2023 is his fourth European medal as player and coach combined, alongside his Champions League and EHF Cup titles as a player and the European League win as a coach. He just missed out on another medal, narrowly losing the European League final to Benfica after extra time last season.

Right after Sunday's final, the Magdeburg coach was still trying to come to terms with what had just happened.

“I still don’t have the words, I still can’t understand what happened during the whole weekend. I never doubted that my players could do it, but there is a huge step between thinking and doing. It’s crazy,” Wiegert concluded.

And as a celebration, the 41-year-old took his two little girls to chant with the SCM fans. The perfect ending to a perfect weekend.

Photos © Jure Erzen, Axel Heimken & Jozo Cabraja / kolektiff