17.04.2014, 10:21
The season for big games has come

BLOG: It is an exciting time of year and not many know how to deal with it as well as Daniel Narcisse, the PSG captain has been through it all before, but is under no illusions as to how tough the task of reaching the VELUX EHF FINAL4 will be against a formidable Veszprem side

The season for big games has come

Hello everybody, I hope you are all fine. The season for big games has come again, and for us players as well as you guys, this is without a doubt the most exciting time of the year.

Meeting well-known opponents

And when you think about big games, Veszprem is of course among the names that come to mind. Veszprem is a club with history, passionate fans, and, of course, amazing players. This is a team that I enjoy playing against, and to be honest I have no choice!

I've played against them four times last season with Kiel and these quarter-finals will be my fourth and fifth confrontation with them this season. We've won one, they've won two, but this time it will be different, because a ticket for Cologne is at stake.

On both sides, not getting there would be seen as a failure and there sure will be disappointed guys in two weeks' time. We know that we'll have to get a result at home for the first leg, because winning in Veszprem is nearly mission impossible. We saw what they did to Plock in the Last 16, their first 20 minutes were amazing.

End of the season tiredness

Of course, when you get to the end of the season, you start to feel all the efforts you've made in the previous months and I'm not 22 anymore, so I feel them a lot. But when you play in the Champions League, you forget about all of this.

With the squad we've got at the PSG, we've had the luxury to rest each other rest for a little bit, taking games off in order to arrive fit on the most important occasions. It's also a good way to keep everyone under pressure which is important.

You can't win a competition like this one with only seven players. Hamburg proved it right last season, with Michael Kraus being the decisive factor in the final. Since February, everyone is playing here, and the whole squad feels fit to take on Veszprem.

Being good teammates

In order not to let rivalry get in the way of our relationships, we've had to change the way our squad was operating a little bit. At the beginning of the season, a lot of us were new and/or didn't speak French, so everyone was in his own little box.

We've had to open up to each other, and some things brought us closer. PSG is a specialist of actions towards children, so we went to a hospital, we also trained with kids from the area, and doing these kinds of things outside of handball created a real bond between us.

This is something we'll need in the heat of the Veszprem arena for example, knowing that your teammate isn't going to let you down. This is perhaps what I lacked in the first half of the season, but hard times have definitely made us stronger.

Until next time,

Daniel Narcisse

TEXT: Daniel Narcisse, PSG Handball captain