“In Plock, I just learnt to be an offensive player. A lot of things that I am right now, as a player, I owe it to Plock. And in Vardar, I played for David Davis, a coach that made me change my vision of handball. He’s one of the best coaches around, everything that you do on the court is for a reason, like how you put you foot or why you do such a move. He made a new player out of me,” says Toto, who came back to France last summer.
He is now leading the Nantes attack and is a centrepiece of the defence too. For Toto, this is a natural follow-up to the last two seasons.
“When I started scoring five goals a game in the Champions League against teams like Kiel or Szeged, I started believing in myself even more. Like, we all have two legs and two arms, maybe some are more talented than others, but I can also be part of the top tier,” he explains.
Even though he joined Nantes only last summer, Toto feels like he has been there for ages and he swiftly became one of the main assets in Gregory Cojean’s team.
“I guess it all comes with experience. I went abroad, played with people it was sometimes a bit tough to get your message across because of the language, so you have to learn how to adapt. To me, these two years far from France were 100 per cent positive” Toto says.
Toto and Nantes have had an extremely good season in the Machineseeker EHF Champions League; with two rounds remaining, Nantes are currently in third place in group B, two points ahead of THW Kiel.
“We really do not want to waste the good start of the season that we had, beating Aalborg twice and Kiel at home. That loss against Celje (in round 11) did us harm, but when you see that they almost beat Barça last week, you understand that everyone can beat anyone in the Champions League,” points out Toto.
Although Toto is playing his second season in the Champions League, he is not taking anything for granted. He claims he would not have believed someone who told him five years ago that he would have a role in a high-profile team in the competition, adding: “I’m as excited as possible every Wednesday. I enjoy every moment even more as I made it to the top level quite late in my career. It is still a pleasure to enter those courts every week.”
