Montenegro and the hope for a successful debut

Montenegro’s women's team celebrates its debut at the European Beach Handball Championships in Lloret de Mar (30 June to 5 July), but for Montenegro as a handball nation it is not the first time to participate at this level.

The men’s team played at the European Beach Handball Championships 2007 in Italy, when they finished 17th – hence the women’s first and foremost goal is to do better than the men, although they admit that their experience in beach handball is minimal.

"Knowing that it’s a huge difference between indoor and beach handball, adjusting to beach handball was difficult.

"The new system of the game, different rules, were all the things we had to put it into action as part of preparation for what is going to be the tournament in Lloret de Mar.

"We hope that our final phase of preparation will be good and positive, like the first part was already at the beginning of June when we worked and improvised in a hall," Montenegro beach handball team coach Dragan Djurdjevac tells eurohandball.com.

Over the past few years Montenegro’s women’s national team, who became European champions in 2012, as well as Buducnost on club level, who won the EHF Champions League in 2012 and 2015, enjoyed great success in indoor handball.

However, none of the great Montenegrin stars will take part at this event as the team is made up of players born in 1993 and younger, who all play for Levalea 2010 from Niksic.

"The players showed maximum dedication to this story, especially taking into account that this is all new to them, the first ever appearance of our women's beach handball national team," Djurdjevac adds.

Montenegro are in Group B alongside Croatia, Ukraine, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Montenegro and Netherlands.

"Bearing in mind that we are debutants, that beach handball in our country is not a well-known sport, we will do our best to present Montenegro at this major competition in the best possible way.

"Each victory will be a huge success for us."