This is me: Stefan Kretzschmar

THIS IS ME: STEFAN KRETZSCHMAR

I was born right into the East German sports system. My mother Waltraud was one of the best handball players of the 1970’s, three-time world champion and an Olympic silver medallist. My father Peter was a former GDR national team player, world champion in outdoor handball, then coach of my mother, first at club level, then with the national team.

Therefore, it was obvious that I would grow up on the handball courts, and from the age of three or four I was a regular at my mother’s matches in Leipzig, our home city. 

There is a story, I don’t remember it, but I have often been told that little Stefan was the halftime entertainment show in Leipzig. The son of Olympic champion Peter Rost, little-Frank, was in goal, little-Stefan was in attack, but we played football, not handball. I was told that nobody went out for a smoke, a coffee or a sausage at the break, and everybody wanted to watch those little boys with famous parents playing football. Funny enough, those two boys became quite successful in different sports, as little-Frank became a football goalkeeper, featured in the Bundesliga and is now a football coach.

So, I was connected to handball quite early, and when my father was appointed as national team coach, we moved to Berlin. I had my first contact to team sports soon after when I started school. I had always been the smallest and the slimmest one in my age group and I was smaller to all the other boys - but as my father was the women’s national team coach, I always had the best equipment. I was the only one with Adidas shoes and a knee protection, but of course, they did not fit, as they were too big, but I had them.

Eventually, I followed the classical GDR sporting path. There was a trial for Berlin’s best handball players aged 12, and I was selected. When I was 14, I was part of the nationwide selection for the Dynamo Berlin sports’ school. The trial took two or three days, and they tested everything; physical condition, technical skills and so on, but as I was still too small and too weak, I failed. My prognosis from the doctors was that I would not grow taller than 1.75 metres, too small for a handball player, even for a wing. The 16 best players of my age were selected for the Dynamo sports’ school, and I was not among them.

But my father used his influence and insisted on my inclusion - and in the long history of the Dynamo sports’ school for the only time 17 instead of 16 boys were affiliated for handball - and 10, 15 others were clearly better than me. You can guess that the next three years were a pure disaster for me, as all others knew why I had become part of their class, and they made my life hell.

To be honest, due to my size I could not cope with the others, in the first one, two years, I was always the last on the bench, mostly did not play. Later-on, the doctors had recognized that I was three years behind the regular development of boys of my age, this was the reason. But I trained hard. As I was too small, I needed other skills to be on a top level. I worked on my speed and on the way to treat the ball.

Everything changed when I turned 16 years old. I grew and within a few months I stood 1.85m tall. Thanks to the skills I had trained and with my new physical condition, I was better than the rest in terms of speed and technique.

I was 16, when the Berlin Wall fell, and everything around me changed completely. We could play matches in West-Germany, and I was discovered there when I was awarded MVP of the Quirinus-Cup in Neuss (close to Dusseldorf), one of the most important tournaments for youth club teams. With Dynamo Berlin, we made it to the final against Minsk. I was 17 years old and was playing Youth Bundesliga in the GDR.

But my club Dynamo went bankrupt, and all top players went west to Bundesliga clubs. I stayed in Berlin when I signed for west Berlin club Spandau, who had taken over the Dynamo licence. We played second division in a unified Germany. I did not receive any offers from a western club, though I played in the junior national team, and I still had to finish school. What made it even tougher for me was I was only second choice left wing for Spandau, with Uwe Hennig the first-choice.

We were promoted to the top league and then my former teammate Iouri Chevtsov became my coach, but I was still only second choice left wing. My only job was to take penalties - and I became the team’s leading scorer, but only from the penalty line.

In 1993, when I was 20, I received those offers from Bundesliga clubs - Hameln and Gummersbach. I could not decide, so my parents took this decision for me, and I went to Gummersbach. We had a meeting with their management in Berlin and on the way to this meeting, my mother asked, what Spandau had offered me. It was 800 Mark (400 EUR) per month and a VW beetle convertible. “And what do you want to earn at Gummersbach?” I said, at least 1500 Mark. She shouted at me, that this is far too much. So, we started the meeting where the club representatives and my parents spoke only about handball, then their lives, and finally about me.

“What do you want to earn?” - was their question. I said: “3000 Mark per month.” In that moment, my father kicked my leg under the table and just wanted to excuse his son, then the VfL guy said: “It’s ok.”

I really did not want to leave Berlin, I loved the nightlife and the culture, and right after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, this was the hottest hotspot and most special city in the world. This was my city, and Gummersbach was a small town in the countryside.

But looking back, this decision was the best I could do for my life. For three years, I could focus entirely on handball and my development. We had an impressive team spirit and the whole region loves handball.

Of course, those people looked puzzled when this handball punk from Berlin arrived. They associated tattoos with either prison or with drug addicts, and my hair - especially the colour - was rarely seen in Gummersbach. But when I played well, they started to like this flamboyant person with the coloured hair, the tattoos and an infatuation with the GDR image, which they did not like in the city of Heiner Brand. There were many reservations, but by scoring goals I ended them easily, and thanks to this Berlin handball punk, there was huge public interest in the club.

Playing at Gummersbach opened the door to the national team. Former coach Arno Ehret just had announced trials for the wing positions. I was invited for two trial matches against Switzerland in 1993, as one of two prospects for the left wing alongside Marc Siegesmund. I scored six goals in “my” half of the first match, Marc scored only once - and then I was part of the national team. My dream had come true, to play with my role model Johnny Baruth on the left wing. Unfortunately for me, they dropped Johnny from the national team, and from that moment on, I was number one in this position. In 1994, I played my first mayor tournament, the EHF EURO in Portugal.

Those three years at Gummersbach really imprinted my development, though the sporting success of the club in Bundesliga was quite low. The time had come to make the next step - I joined SC Magdeburg. Like Gummersbach in West-Germany, Magdeburg was the most traditional handball club in the East, you cannot not make a mistake if you go there.

Manager Bernd-Uwe Hildebrand had excited me with his vision: building a new arena and winning the German championship and then the EHF Champions League. Even in Magdeburg, many people said that this project was unbelievable and impossible. I loved this vision - but again, there were reservations about me. SC Magdeburg is the classic working-class club, and Dynamo Berlin (the club I played for before) was the government’s club. The enmity between both clubs was huge, and normally, you’d never move from “arrogant” Dynamo to “working-class” SCM, but I did it in 1996. I never had a manager or agent in my whole life, so I would negotiate my contract on my own.

My idea was to be closer to Berlin, and at that time, there was no professional handball clubs in Berlin and Magdeburg were the closest club. After six months of commuting from my flat in Berlin to training and matches, my coach Lothar Doering said: “From a professional point of view, it is better to live in the city, where you play.” He was right.

I was one of the first stars in this newly built team, but thanks to the network of famous player agent Wolfgang Gütschow, many more stars arrived - from France like Christian Gaudin, Joel Abati or Gueric Kervadec, for me still the best defender in the history of handball, because he defended not only with his arms, but with his knees and legs. Then we got some new Russian teammates like mastermind Oleg Kuleshov or shooter Wjatscheslav Atawin and finally Icelandic genius Olafur Stefansson, still one of my best friends in handball.

The final piece of this puzzle was a young coach, arriving from Hameln, Alfred Gislason. It was quite a risk to sign an inexperienced coach like him, but he was not only a great motivator and communicator, but a tactical mastermind. He changed our counter attacks and lifted our attack to new heights by a few simple moves, knowing that our defence middle block with Kervadec and Steffen Stiebler was solid as a rock. Alfred’s speeches in the dressing room were more like for Viking warriors than for handball players: “Fight for your country, your city, your club” - but he managed to make our team grow more and more.

With this team, we started to rock the handball world. In 1999 and 2001 we won the EHF Cup, and finally took the first German championship in 2001 - ahead of the world class line-up of THW Kiel. Since unification, the whole of Magdeburg had waited for this trophy - and to be honest: leaving this Kiel team with Wislander, Olsson and Lövgren behind, was a bigger success for me than winning the Champions League a year later. Kiel were simply unbeatable at that time - but we managed it.

Thanks to this trophy we would play Champions League. Mighty FC Barcelona had failed to qualify that season, as well as Kiel. So, we made our dream come true. I still remember the quarter-final against Celje. We had lost our home match - which we had to play in Berlin, and in Celje. Current SCM coach Bennet Wiegert had the match of his life. But finally, it was Nenad Perunicic’s shot which lifted us to the semis with a 28:25 win after the 29:31 defeat at home.

The semis against Kolding were quite easy, and as Veszprem had eliminated defending champions Portland San Antonio, it was a double do-or-die in two packed arenas, in two handball-crazy cities. In the first leg, Veszprem’s goalkeeper Arpad Sterbik was my personal nightmare. I played so weak, that Alfred Gislason moved me from the wing to the centre back in the last five minutes. We lost 21:23 - but then turned it around with a 30:25 victory at home to become the first German club to lift the trophy. It was such great happiness - and we celebrated it for at least one week.

I continued playing for SCM until 2007, won the EHF Cup again - and despite having a valid contract until 2008, I asked the club to quit as a player. I felt empty, and because of the club’s financial problems, I knew that we would not fight for any more titles - and I was too ambitious to play for fifth or sixth position. I had something like “handball-burnout.” I had enough, there was no motivation, no passion anymore.

I wanted to continue as Magdeburg’s sports director, to help the club, to take my SCM forward. But to be honest, the club board did not like the idea, but they agreed, when the fans on the stands were shouting for me to be the new sports director. I took over this position for 18 months, then resigned and left the club which had imprinted my career.

Earlier in 2004 I played my last international match for Germany. Volker Zerbe, Klaus-Dieter Petersen, Christian Schwarzer and I had agreed to finish our careers after the Athens 2004 Olympic Games - we wanted to finish at the World Championship in Germany in 2005. But as Tunisia was awarded as the host, for us, it was a protest, not to play anymore.

My last international match was an Olympic final - and like all my finals before with Germany I lost it to Croatia. It was still a sweet ending to this part of my career. At the team banquet in Piraeus, Campino, the singer of the famous German band “Die Toten Hosen” made an incredible speech to our team - and then the party started, despite winning silver medals.

At the 2003 World Championship I missed the final against Croatia after I broke my finger in the semi - and when Germany became EHF EURO champions in 2004, I missed the tournament after surgery, but went by car to Ljubljana to attend the final.

Even to know that Germany will host the 2007 World Championship, was no motivation for us to continue - and I do not regret anything. I did not feel that I should have come back for the national team after 2004 (though coach Heiner Brand put me on the provisional team list for 2007) or to a club after 2007.

When I left as Magdeburg sports director, one door closed, and another one opened - with another crazy project. Player agents Erik Göthel and Björn Schulz, and club manager Karsten Günther had the idea to lift SC DHfK Leipzig from the sixth division to Bundesliga and asked me to join their team as part of the board of directors. Though I was still a “die-hard” of SCM, I agreed, as Leipzig was no direct rival for Magdeburg. It was a huge challenge, but eventually we made it from league 5 to 4 to 3 to 2 and then the Bundesliga, all within 10 years. My problem was that we could not extend the contracts of those players, who lifted the team up to the next league, as we always needed new ones to be competitive.

The role was essentially voluntary, so I needed so work, and I became a handball summariser, first at Sport 1, then for SKY. I love to go to handball matches, to talk to players, coaches and agents. I would pay the regular entrance fee - but now I am privileged to come there as a TV expert.

As I have been the Füchse Berlin sports director since 2019, I always taken care, not to mention all the gossip, backgrounds and information I know - and I am even more critical, when it comes to Füchse players or the club itself (of course, I never comment a Füchse matches). I take it very serious with a lot of responsibility. Being a TV expert and being Füchse sports director is huge fun for me - and we have a perfect and successful constellation on club level: Bob Hanning is the boss, he takes the final decisions, but I oversee putting the team together. It is always related to the DNA of the club: to mix home-grown talents with international stars.

The focus on the Füchse youth academy is huge. We try to give as many young players as possible the chance to become part of the squad. Besides taking care on the sporting side part, I also help in sponsor activation and communication. Our concept always includes long-term contracts, which means that the core of our team is signed until 2025.

Of course, making it to the EHF Champions League is one of the club’s major goals now. Therefore, we have widened our squad, but still we know that if some key players like Dejan Milosavljev, Mjhajlo Marsenic, Fabian Wiede, Paul Drux or Mathias Gidsel are ruled-out by long-term injuries, we have a problem.

Besides my professional handball business, I still have a different approach to handball in my family and my 22-year-old daughter Lucie-Marie. I never pushed her to play handball, and she even started to play basketball, but as there was no real competition in her age group, she switched to handball.

We all know that the biggest pressure for her is her last name, but she has coped with this situation brilliantly. She made her way to becoming a Bundesliga player, but her biggest joy is playing beach handball, and winning the European Championship, the World Championship and the World Games with the German team in one year was simply incredible. I see her confidence grow, how she develops off court and the release of pressure on her to win all those trophies.

Beyond handball, I am a proud father of a young women, a goodie, who goes her own way on and off the handball court. She is now studying to become a primary school teacher. For me as a father, handball is secondary, when compared to her development as a personality.

Stefan Kretzschmar
October 2022