Greek ambitions

Despite the current economical crisis all over the Europe, Patras is making progress every year. This season the Greek champions want to qualify for the Group Matches.

Eurohandball.com: This will be your third CL qualifications. With three consecutive victories last season in the first round of the qualification Patras made significant improvement.

Andreas Kogkas Our last season in European competitions was in general quite successful. We learnt a lot and we became much wiser and more ambitious. So this year we want more.

Eurohandball.com: You signed a new coach, Michael Aksenov. What will your team look like this season?

Andreas Kogkas: Our new coach, Michael Aksenov, has experience from European competitions and also from the strong Russian championship. From the middle of last season, an important back player joined us, Anja Frešer from Slovenia. We were extremely satisfied with her so we prolonged her contract for another year.

The two best Greek players, Eleni Pimenidou and Vivi Kazaki, will also remain with the team. The Czech Pavla Poznarova arrived from Metz, the Slovenian Tanja Dajčman came from the Spanish league, Nada Mičić came from Serbia and there are also Ukrainian the goalkeeper Olesya Semechenko and the Greek goalkeeper Pandora Korra. All of them have great European experience and they will help us take an important step forward.

Eurohandball.com: Your team will play Group 4 of the CL Qualification Tournament 2 against Aalborg, Sagunto and a team from QT1. Expectations?

Andreas Kogkas: Our secret desire is to make two victories. We know our opponents very well and if in the next days we manage to bring one more player, anything can happen.

Eurohandball.com: It is good to see a handball club with such ambitious plans, especially in this period of economical downturn. What are your long term plans?

Andreas Kogkas: First of all, we want to have our own sports hall soon. That will help us a lot.

In September 2010 our plan is to organise a big tournament with big European teams coming. With this tournament we will celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the club. And of course we want to win Greek championship and the Greek Cup again next season and also to have a good season in the CL.