A summer of love and a big move for Mikler

This year has been an outstanding one in Roland Mikler’s life. He won the EHF Cup with Pick Szeged in May and now continues his career with last season’s VELUX EHF FINAL4 participant MKB-MVM Veszprém KC. Moreover, this summer saw his focus shift fully away from handball for a while, as he got married at a romantic castle in Hungary.

Typically a man proposes to his sweetheart, then the couple start to organise the wedding, but this order was changed by Mikler. About eight months ago he simply asked his girlfriend, Kati what her opinion was about getting married this summer.

Since she liked the idea they began to organise the wedding and reserved the Royal Palace of Gödöllő in October. Roland wanted to pop up the question officially in Dubai last December but a delay in receiving their visas meant that the proposal took place at home and the preparation of the wedding went into full swing.

“We asked a wedding planner to help us but I also pulled my weight in the preparations. I didn’t deal with topics like decoration and cake but I wanted to have very professional sound and light,” said the goalkeeper, who also knew exactly what music choices he wanted as he occasionally acts as a DJ at clubs.

About 180 guests enjoyed the well planned wedding party, including former teammates from Szeged, teammates from Veszprém and national team players at the wedding. Almost 40 per cent of the guests were connected to handball in some way.

The relationship of Roland and Kati is also connected to handball. They met at the Cell Cup when Roland was 14 and Kati the left wing was 12.

“We just looked at each other, didn’t talk too much, maybe only one or two sentences. I thought she would be a very beautiful girl. We grew up and didn’t meet until I ended a long relationship and contacted Kati, because I could not get her out of my head,” revealed Roland.

New life in Veszprém

After the honeymoon the couple moved to Veszprém and their new life has begun. For Roland this life is full of training for the time being: “I don’t really know the city at present, only the arena and the running track. But we have more or less established our new flat.”

Although the city is new for him the Spanish handball style can be familiar since he worked with Juan Carlos Pastor in Szeged.

“I don’t see any differences between Ortega and Pastor as I did not realise huge differences between the Hungarian and the Spanish style when we started to work with Juan Carlos Pastor: I think I would see these kind of details if I were a court player, but as a goalkeeper I don’t have to deal with tactics too much.”

He did not have to deal with tactics in the training camp in Rogla either: “I have never lifted so many weights during a training camp. Earlier I had totally different tasks from my teammates’, I had special trainings for goalkeepers.” 

These special tasks come now for the 29-year-old, who thinks that he needs to improve his speed with shooting practices and other tasks with ball in hand. His preparation may be crucial for the team due to an injury for Alilovic and the absence of Fazekas, who will be in Qatar until December.

“This is a big challenge for me and also a huge responsibility in a team at this level. Everybody expects from me to perform on as good level as they and I also expect the same from myself.

“I have never experienced so high level of perfectionism and professionalism before. These values reflect from the coaches, teammates, during the trainings and other programmes because this is an elite team,” concluded Mikler.