A tough task ahead
“We have the finalists of the world championship from last year, so it’s going to be tough. And Poland, of course, have a big tradition and a lot of players playing beach handball,” Teixeira says about his team’s group phase opponents.
Poland also took part in last year’s EHF Beach Handball Championship, going home with the gold medal. The objective for Malta is ambitious, nevertheless.
“Even if it is not in the group phase, I would like to win games and play according to the plan we have established. And for the players to keep believing in our process and to keep this process going for future tournaments.”
Regarding the playing style, Pedro Teixeira has a clear idea in mind.
“We want to get to a more modern style of playing with a lot of tactical variations in attack, a lot of pressure in defence. We don’t have a big team, so we have to do different things to win balls in defence. That’s our goal. I would like for people to compare us to last year and say that Malta have improved. Even though this year the big teams are there in comparison to last year. Still, if people watch a match from 2024 and compare it to 2025, they can see that we have improved.”
“We plan to make the chances of winning bigger and the gap to the other teams closer with time. If we have the chance in 2025 to win a set or a match, of course, we have to go for it,” summarises Teixeira.
To implement his ideas, the team has increased its training sessions to three per week since April. At the ebt Calise Cup in Gaeta, they want to set up two friendly matches, and before the tournament in Türkiye, the plan is to do “two weeks of more intensive work to give the team the minutes we can, so they can develop and keep learning the game.”