France Bleu: Budapest is no longer a deadline. Metz Handball is there…
Thierry Weizman: the countdown has been going on since the start of the school year. Since our landing, getting on the bus, these media points, the whole organization, it went crescendo until we entered this absolutely extraordinary room. We’ll have to make the girls understand, but I imagine it’s on everyone’s mind.
France Bleu: you who have experienced everything, ups, downs, how are you living this moment? Is there any particular stress?
Thierry Weizman: I’m lucky because I don’t know how many Presidents have lived through two “final four”. Sometimes it never happens, or once… It’s an organizational stress, to make sure everything is going well, but it’s not no sports stress. I tell myself that we can’t do more harm than the first time or that we can necessarily do better. It would be absolutely extraordinary to go to the final, that’s really the goal, but if we don’t go, I say it without the players and the staff hearing me, I would already be very happy to be among the four best teams in the world.
On the one hand, we may have a capital of trust. On the other, they have a feeling of revenge
France bleu: once the goal is reached, there are no more limits…
Thierry Weizman: anything is possible. We have an incredible deadline against a club that we have already beaten twice and I hope that we will not fall into the trap as was the case with Rostov, in 2019. On the one hand, we can to be a source of trust in relation to Vipers. On the other, they have a feeling of revenge. It is probably, with the Brest match last weekend, the most important match of the year. Because then, on a final, anything is possible. It would be incredible because, in terms of budget, we are also little Thumb.
France Bleu: do you think back to your takeover at Metz Handball? This is the kind of event that allows you to measure the progress made…
Thierry Weizman: unquestionably. But it’s not just taking power because I’m lucky to have lived the 24 titles, as president or doctor. I always say that our first trips, with Olivier Krumbholz, in the European Cup, we conceded twelve or fifteen goals in the Eastern European countries. Then, we qualified for the first time for the Champion’s League. On a preliminary round. We qualified on goal average. We then moved on to the point in the main round. Then in the quarter-finals. We got there the first time and we took a volley against Bucharest. The second time, it passed, then a final four… What interests me is the growth of the club, stabilizing it in the four best in the world. When I look back 20 or 30 years, I say to myself that it is absolutely incredible since the clubs of the North and the clubs of the East reigned supreme.
Metz Handball – Vipers Kristiansand, semi-final of the Champions League, to live live from the MVM Dome in Budapest from 5.45 p.m. this Saturday on France Bleu Lorraine with Thomas Lavaud