Europa Cup 2016 – Johan Oosterling interview

Earlier today (Tuesday, 12 January) Trojans arrived in Budapest, Hungary and completed their first training session in the sports hall.

We caught up with Trojans player/ coach Johan Oosterling ahead of the tournament: “I am feeling very confident this year for the coming Europa Cup, We have some new additions to the squad and we have been able to prepare much better this year with a much stronger squad of players.

“I think we are ready to challenge for the Bronze medal. The training has been very good as we have been able to build on the changes we’ve introduced last season.

“We also had a great and intensive trainings weekend last weekend and against a hard and tightly defending Nomads team we looked comfortable and even with making rolling subs we were comfortable for most of the match.

“The players are at peak fitness, we’ve got the hunger and the experience in the team, the spirit is really good with everybody focussed on that one goal which is a medal.

“We are going to this tournament with our sights on the bronze medal as realistically that is the maximum we can get this year. We know that if we progress to the 2nd round we would meet the favourites Benfica and they eliminated us 2 years ago. We’ve learned from the last couple of years and are confident that this year we are able to get to that bronze medal match.

“Last year the difference between the 3rd – 7th place was really small with teams beating each other with a single goal and I expect nothing else this year so we will need to be at our very best.”

Trojans first match at the Europa Cup 2016 is against the Polish champions, Warszawa at 11:50 GMT on Wednesday, 13 January 2016. You can watch the live stream of the match on WorldKorfball.org or through the IKF YouTube channel.