The numbers that multiply the value of the Warriors silver in the handball World Cup

"A new era opens," said Carlos Viver after the team won silver at the World Cup in Japan, a success that comes two years earlier than expected. The next edition of the World Championship is held in Spain in 2021 and there was the focus for the generational change be completed, so that the players who won medals had a settled relief. The toll was to have to pass some transition championships, to sow, without looking too much at the result. The new Warriors were twelfth in the 2018 European and eleventh in the previous World Cup. "There comes a time when heavyweights have to give way to young people, but young women need competitiveness, training, more international competition, and for that it takes patience," says Paco Blázquez, the president of the Federation. «I was angry when they said that there was not going to be a new generation and I always said that nobody is essential and just like us we achieved successes based on work and humility, they were also going to reach them. I know because I know them, they are very curious, ”says Bego Fernández, one of the multi-medalist Warriors, now retired.

Carlos Viver took command of the team two years ago and among the measures that were implemented was to make concentrations with the girls in the free weeks of the league, which currently has twelve teams. They are concentrations that simulate those that could have with the selection. A way to grow. Almost all of them have come, for example, the runner-up goalkeeper of the world Silvia Navarro, who plays in the current champion Rocasa Gran Canaria. He is 40 years old and can transmit all his experience.

With this we thought about the future of the national team while seeking to strengthen a league that a few years ago was one of the best in Europe and now occupies the fifteenth position! Yes, the fifteenth continental league has been runner-up in the world, something that is beyond logic. With that position in the ranking and without sufficient financial support, Spanish clubs, for example, cannot dispute the Champions League. The crisis was hard with the handball. Itxako was the symptom: in 2011 he played the Champions League final and in 2013 he disappeared. It was the team in which almost all the internationals were, who had to go abroad in order to live off their sport. The panorama that remained was that of an amateur championship, but steps are being taken to improve, little by little. The Federation took over the league. First he had as a sponsor Lotteries and, since 2017, Iberdrola. Each day a game is televised on public television, where there is also a weekly space with the summary of the day. The rest of the meetings can be watched by streaming. The championship has, therefore, showcase.

In 2018, it went from fourteen to twelve teams and two groups were established, the first speed and the second. The first ones are forced to have all their players have a contract, which are listed on Social Security. And the second must at least have six players in those conditions. Approximately 65 percent of players in the Liga Guerreras Iberdrola have a contract. What happens is that in most cases salaries are still insufficient. «Now many players are in the top category and have to combine it with their work, And that is unfeasible. The total success would be that we could offer the optimal conditions so that the players who are outside (in France, Hungary, Romania ...) can return to Spain, ”Bego Fernández thinks. "Hopefully this success of the selection will be a stimulus for sponsors to arrive," they say from the Federation.

The other side of the crisis is that young women can debut early. Thus, for example, the side of Rocasa Seyna Mbengue, who would have had options to go to the World Cup, but is injured, premiered in the league with 17 and now with 21 is one of the referents of his team, the champion. Seven of the 17 silver medalists play in Spain.