Doha: Qatar, the silver medallists at this year’s 24th Men’s Handball World Championship who are aiming to qualify for the Olympics for the first time will have a “difficult” task on hand in the qualification tournament, feels the Gulf nation’s Spanish coach Valero Rivera Lopez.
The Spaniard guided the hosts to a “dream” second place at the World Championship held in Doha from January 15 to February 1.
The 62-year-old is now seeking to extend the World Championship dream run at the Olympic qualification tournament.
Rivera, who coached his home nation to the 2013 world title, feels the success of his team at the 2015 championship in Qatar will force opponents to adopt a different plan.
“Our next target, our dream, and our objective, is to qualify for the Rio Olympics. Now, it (Olympic qualification) will be more difficult,” said Rivera, while speaking to reporters after being honoured by the Arab Sports Press Association with a special award for his contribution to the development of sports in Qatar.
“I will repeat, it will be difficult,” he added.
Training for the Olympic qualification tournament has already kicked off with the teams working as a unit during the two-day break between the local league.
“We will begin our intensive training from August 10 till the end of October, which give us sufficient time to prepare for the Olympic qualification tournament.”
“We need to understand our success and our shortcomings at the World Championship, so we met for the first time last
week and we analysed the video footage of our matches, our strong points and the mistakes we committed.”
For Rivera the team as a unit is important than individual players and he has made this clear in no uncertain terms.
“I am not sure if I will retain the same team which finished runners-up at the World Championship. It is difficult to achieve success with the same set of players. I changed five players after the Asian Games success and three players after the Asian Championship win. Now I do not know, maybe I call some players whom I dropped after the Asian Games. But one thing is for sure those players who do intend to work hard after success will not find a place,” said the acclaimed coach.
“As a team the roles are clear and we aim to continue our success and we aim to work and continue to improve. Inshallah we will be in the Olympic Games, so not much should be inferred from the addition of new players. So change in tactics and changing some players and not all players for the Olympic qualification tournament is a possibility,” Rivera said.
The six teams, which qualified from the 2015 Qatar tournament will be joined by six continental teams with the best records. The 12 teams will contest in three Olympic qualification tournament to be played in three different continents and which will be held in April 2016. The two best ranked teams of each of these three tournaments will qualify for the Games.
The remaining four spots will be decided at the continental qualification events.
The Olympic qualification for Asian Countries will be held from November 9 to 20 in Qatar with the winner qualifying for the Rio Games, three other continental winners from the 2015 Pan American Games, 2016 European Championship and 2016 African Championship will join the Asian Champions.
Like in Beijing 2008 and London 2012 before, the handball tournament at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro will consist of twelve men and women teams each.
Only the hosting nation Brazil are directly qualified with teams of both genders. The world champions France booked a direct ticket to Rio after their win in Qatar. THE PENINSULA
