Video interview with the coach Bogdan Wenta after Croatia - Poland match

Wenta: brakuje mi w tej grupie człowieka, który to pociągnie

Before the game against Serbia there was such silence in the dressing room... There was a change later, but today... On the morning walk, on the meeting before the game the mood was full of optimism.

For Croats it was a game for everything, and it was the same for us. We commited mistakes in this match, we suffered a break down. It seems that this group lacks the leader, someone who will inspire the others. Sometimes Grzesiu [Tkaczyk] plays this part but he was ruled out by an injury. Sławek [Szmal] is a great figure, showed it today through his great performance, but we can't expect that he is going to cover the goal completely, save everything and we are only going to score.

It was a series of easy mistakes again. It's a bit embarassing. If it is only unused clear situation, the team can't be really blamed for it. If it repeats three or four times in the row the player can be always changed. But it's puzzling that in simple situations we are losing the ball or passing it straight in the hands of an opponent. Those throws are intended to be so easy just in purpouse to start the game well, to face the opponent. Today we expected that they are going to wait what we are going to do. There were good moments, we had postions to score. When we hesitated for a while, tried to slow down on the back, there were counter-attacks.

I know the Croatian team's way of playing by heart. To sum up today they also didn't play anything different than usual. But it worked out, they were more effective or perhaps they commited less mistakes, or, I don't know, the spectators were more favourable for them because thay are among the top teams not only for the last four years but for ten, right? Well, it's a certain advantage.

They say... Well, today Croats had a few players from Bundesliga in the squad... But in the backstage people generally say that players playing in Bundesliga are more tired that the others. But then again, it's standing in the front of the cameras and saying what we all want to hear.

We are the group where there is sixteen players and the coaching staff, so it's obvious that as in every group they are friendships but they are also anthypaties. Someone likes someone else more, someone is irritated by someone's else behaviour. We are together for nearly a month so you can be annoyed just by seeing the t-shirt another person is wearing or beg my pardon what is served for the breakfast or what hour we are drinking coffee. It's normal. Add stress to this to get the picture. If you win matches, everything is okay, the cooperation goes well. Even if something is not quite right... Like today in Grabarczyk's case. I have a lot of admiration for him, because it had seemed he was injuried and yet he managed to play quite well.

Video interview with the coach Bogdan Wenta after Denmark - Poland match

MŚ piłkarzy ręcznych. Wenta po meczu z Danią [WIDEO]

We made a lot of changes in the first half but we lacked the effectiveness. Our playing sheme was too plain. In the second was more work and running, Tomek Tłuczyński scored, Lisek [Patryk Kuchczyński] scored, to cut long story short we started playing. We stopped thinking too much, we started playing how we are able to do. However, we are not always sucessful. I hadn't take the timeout because I though that we had a chance to tie the game and that it will be needed before the last action.

But when there was the last 16 seconds they didn't even give us a chance to touch the ball.

But that free-throw when Mariusz tried to pass the ball to the pivot... We shouted that he should pass to Zarek [Mateusz Zaremba]. We didn't counted too much on Zarek and perhaps he would be able to score... but... It didn't work anyway. What to add more? To be honest I will say that despite the fact the game was lost, there is a lot of interesting things to study. You have seen the game too so for sure you have a lot of thoughts about it, you can ask about many things. But sometimes one has to ask people, because it's a team game and everyone is important, every decision of the referee is also important, every decision how to play in the defence and in the attack is important too. And today I think... We can again, as we often do in Poland, ponder about 'what could happen if the things were different'.

It turns out that it's not as good as it could be, but it's also not as bad.

Poland - Czech Republic (33:32), New Year's Tournament in Gdynia, 7.01.11, videos

Went to watch a handball games a week ago on the New Year's Tournament in Gdynia. Enjoyed both, Slovakia against Hungary and Poland against Czech Republic. Took some video footage during the latest.

Polish handball team before Poland - Czech Republic game (Gdynia, 7.01.11)



Warm-up session







Piotr Wyszomirski's warm-up session



Poland - Czech Republic game





The end of the match, Karol Bielecki is named the best Polish player of the game



I have also loads of photos but still need some time to chose the best ones.