James Bond for motivation

On Thursday the two top teams of the Champions League Group H will meet in the “clash of giants”.

Rhein Neckar Löwen and RK Zagreb are already qualified for the Main Round, but this duel will decide the number one of the group and the number of points taken to the Main Round.

At the first match Löwen surprisingly made a draw in Zagreb. The new coach Wolfgang Schwenke hopes for a victory now:

“This match will be an absolutely decisive game. We all want to reach the Main Round with three points so we have to win. I don’t have to motivate my player a lot. Everybody knows that they have to fight for every ball, fight for every centimetre of the court. But we have to be patient against the strong Croatian defence.”

Löwen will have to play the game in an unusual hall, the Europahalle of Karlsruhe. Their home court, SAP Arena is closed down to renovation works and the hall of Eppelheim where they played their first two CL matches is too small. 11 000 tickets have already been sold.

However, Löwen will have a special preparation period in Karlsruhe:

“We will have an extra training session in the hall to get used to it. Afterwards the whole team will go to cinema to watch the new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, as a kind of motivation. We don’t want to get a quantum solace after the match against Zagreb,” coach Wolfgang Schwenke says.

He hopes, that “a victory against this top team will bring us the confidence we need for the Bundesliga where we had some disappointment this season”.

Especially he wants his players to reduce the number of mistakes in attack:

“We played not so well against Szeged, but we have shown the fighting spirit you need for such a victory.”

In the Löwen team all players are fit – and eager to beat Zagreb.