There has been close to zero question about who will be Croatia’s next head coach, but there has been a lot of speculation about when Dagur Sigurdsson would be announced. And after three weeks, the wait is over. Croatia now has it’s first foreign head coach for the national team
One week ago, Sigurdsson was reportedly stuck with a contract with the Japanese national team, but now that contract has been terminated and the 50-year-old Icelandic coach has been confirmed as Croatia’s next head coach. Croatia’s handball federation’s president, Tomislav Grahovac, made the announcement during a press conference earlier today.
– We negotiated with several coaches and found ourselves in a situation where we needed to choose a foreign coach for the first time. There were technical obstacles in finalizing the negotiations promptly because Sigurdsson had a contract with the Japanese federation. We couldn’t finalize our agreement until he terminated that contract. Fortunately, we managed to overcome these technical obstacles, and we hope that he will be our coach for a long time, said Tomislav Grahovac.
The new head coach has a tough job ahead of him, with only two weeks left until he needs to be on the sideline for the Olympic qualifiers.
– We didn’t talk too much about the future, the most important are the next two or three weeks. Paris is our dream and now that’s all that matters, said Dagur Sigurdsson on the press conference.
– The team is very good, but in big competitions, the last step towards the semi-finals is missing. In the next two weeks we have to do everything to be ready for Hanover.
The Croatian news site 24sata reports that Dagur Sigurdsson has signed a 4-year contract.
The entire press conference– Predstavljanje novog izbornika hrvatske muške rukometne reprezentacije.