This is me: Stefan Lövgren

THIS IS ME: Stefan Lövgren

I was born in a little village half an hour away from Gothenburg, with around 3,000 inhabitants. When I was young, everybody played football in summer and handball in winter – two seasons with two sports. My father was a handball player in the Swedish second division and my brother, four years older than me, was playing handball and football too.

So I started playing handball when I was seven. My best memory of those younger days was when I was 16; I played in the same team in the third division, Skepplanda BTK, together with my father and my brother for one season, this was pure fun.

In those early years my youth coaches paved the way for my career, they fanned my fire for handball. They made me feel so enthusiastic for every training, for every match. Of course, later on my career was imprinted by coaches such as Bengt Johansson and Noka Serdarusic, but without those grass roots, nothing would have been possible.

When I was 20, I joined the famous club Redbergslids IK in Gothenburg. Magnus Wislander had just left for Kiel, I arrived and many top players of our later ‘golden generation’ like Ljubomir Vranjes and Peter Gentzel also started their careers at that time at Redbergslids.

We imprinted an era in Swedish club handball, but when I arrived we were close to being relegated to the second division. Finally I became Swedish champion five times in eight years, in 1993, 1995, 1996, 1997 and 1998. This club was a big base for our famous national team, called the ‘Bengan Boys’, because many of those stars played for Redbergslids.

Alongside being a handball professional in Gothenburg I could do my job. I was a sales manager for fax and copy machines, and I could combine both jobs perfectly. My wife had a good job, and for my development as a handball player, those years at Redbergslids were perfect. There was no need to leave this club as early as possible. What was good for me might be completely different to others.

In contrast to today, when many top players go abroad at the age of 19 or 20, I was 27 years old when I left Sweden to start something new in Germany. My first club was TV Niederwürzbach, a great club with great people on and off the court. It was a pity that the club had financial problems, so I was there only for one season, and had to leave in 1999.

In the end, this forced change was the biggest luck I could have had in my life – I got an offer from THW Kiel, and I played with my Swedish friends Magnus Wislander and Staffan Olsson and many more great players in a great club. Nobody could guess at that moment that I would stay at Kiel for 10 years and that I would become the team captain of an outstanding team. It was a highly successful period: we were seven times German champions, four times German cup winners, four times Champions League finalists, and lifted this coveted trophy in 2007, one of the best experiences in my whole career.

So many THW players had fought to win this trophy, and finally we made it. All of them who came before contributed to this moment when we were on the podium. So many players were injured in those finals against Flensburg, we had to sign veteran Andrej Xepkin to have a full squad – it was an incredible story.

But those trophies were not the most spectacular memory for me in Kiel, but the fact that every home match in our Ostseehalle was sold out with 10,250 fans - every match! When the horn was blown as the signal for the team presentation and the players entered the court, the atmosphere always sent shivers down my spine.

You could not believe the tension if you were not there, this whole city of Kiel lives and breathes handball. And those little things like when the horn was blown have such a huge significance. Handball was the number one sport in Kiel though many water sport and sailing Olympians come from there – but in the end, Kiel was and is handball.

And thinking about Kiel, it is not only about handball. Both of my kids were born there, our family grew up in Kiel. Kiel changed my life, my kids changed my life. Kiel is a huge part of my life.

But of course, it was not only joy and happiness, especially when I think about my last two Champions League finals in 2008 and 2009. Two of the world’s greatest handball teams, THW Kiel and Ciudad Real, clashed in four matches which in my opinion belong to the best handball duels of all time. Those matches were pure excitement for all – players, coaches, fans, TV spectators. Those games were simply incredible, but unfortunately for us, Ciudad Real were twice on the podium.

Ciudad Real’s Olafur Stefansson was probably the best player I ever faced in the Champions League. He was such a great leader of his team, he played with head and heart and he had such great qualities in reading and steering a match.

It was incredible for me to be part of all four finals, as it was my clear plan to end my career in 2008. But as there was a huge transition with Alfred Gislason as the incoming coach, they asked me to extend for one more year, so I stayed. But this final decision was set, as my kids were about to start school in Sweden.

And then came 10 August 2009, one of the most emotional days in my handball career: my farewell match in the sold-out Ostseehalle. It was impossible for me to understand what happened that night, I had to watch the videos from this match later several times.

When they raise the jersey with your number under the roof of a temple of handball, this is an unbelievable honour. I felt so proud. And I was happy that I stopped playing handball at the right time. I did not want to be this pensioner on court who could not say no. Everything has its time, and my time had come – I was 39 years old, old enough to retire.

I was honoured to play with many world class players in Kiel, and especially with Wislander and Olsson for so many years in the club and in the national team. We knew each other in and out. Staffan now coaches the Netherlands, Magnus is coach of the goalball national team and still works for the Swedish post in Gothenburg and I work for Swedish Handball. And, of course, we talk a lot about the good old times when we meet.

We were part of this great ‘Bengan Boys’ story with Bengt Johansson, one of the most inspiring coaches ever in handball. Our golden generation still get invited for many appointments, fortunately we do not play handball anymore as veteran Bengan Boys. But we still have a great team spirit and stay in close contact.

We were world and European champions, but we lost all our Olympic finals. But I still say there are so many great sportsmen and woman all over the globe who never made it to the Olympic Games, and there are so few in all sports who made it to Olympic finals, so we should be really, really happy that we were finalists. In sport there are winners and losers, this is what you have to accept.

I still cross fingers for our current Swedish generation that they will end this curse and become Olympic champions. This would be a relief for our generation, who also contributed so much to Swedish handball history.

But you cannot compare today’s handball with the way we played. For 20 years, Sweden had not been EHF EURO champions, now we are again, and it is a completely different sport compared to 2002 when we lifted the trophy for the last time. The number of top nations which can fight for the trophies has increased rapidly. The whole world of sports has changed since the Bengan Boys.

I never felt I wanted to become a coach. I wanted to stay connected to handball, but in a different way and role. So after finishing my career I started as a player agent together with my former THW teammate Martin Schmidt. At the same time, I was ambassador for the EHF FINAL4, then I was elected member of the EHF Executive.

I have worked for the Swedish federation since 2011, where we also try to be a recurrent organiser of the World and European Championships, so there is always enough work to do. It is our great goal to raise the interest in handball in Sweden, to bring many kids to the clubs, to bring handball to the media. This is the only way handball can have a great future in all countries.

When I look back on my handball life, which started in 1977, I am very thankful for everything. Handball gave me so much, handball imprinted my life, handball widened my horizons. Through handball, I learnt to deal with different people, different countries, different cultures and mentalities, different age groups. Nobody is the same, there are so many variations, but in the end, it is about the team. You can only be successful as a team, on and off the court.

And I learnt a lot about Sweden and Germany. How they handle things here and there. I got a new view on my home country by seeing Sweden from abroad. I travelled a lot with the club and the national team; I saw many places I never would have seen without handball. And thanks to handball I think I became a better person, as handball gave me the chance to develop.

Stefan Lövgren
April 2023