Sixteen-time champions Germany are bringing a “really cool group” to Leuven as they look to try and win back the men’s EuroHockey Indoor Championship title.
They are coached once again by Rein van Eijk as he did in 2022 with the assistance of the legendary Tobias Hauke who signed off his international playing career at that event in Hamburg. Stephan Haumann will provide the analysis.
“It was personally important to me to get Tobi on board,” said van Eijk. “He knows me, knows the team, he knows what is expected in international indoor hockey.”
They will travel to Belgium hot on the heels of the German championship finals weekend with practice matches against Belgium and Austria in midweek before opening their campaign against Spain next Thursday.
Looking at his panel, it is one selected mainly on form from the domestic league with the recent Olympic qualifiers in mind.
“Anton Brinckmann, Anton Boeckel, Paul Dösch, Adrian Lehmann-Richter and Henrik Mertgens were already there at the last championship in 2022.
I think we have a really cool group with established players like Consti Staib and Paul Kaufmann, who were both in Tokyo. We have hall experts with Dösch and Brinckmann, and Anton Pöhling was also there in Berlin in 2020.
“And of course we have the two top scorers in the first Bundesliga with Elian Mazkour and Henrik Mertgens.”
Assessing their chances, Germany will always be among the major challengers as they have never missed the podium and only once missed out on the top two. In 2022, they were denied gold by Austria in a tense 2-1 decider.
“As Germany, we clearly want to win the tournament but we are aware that we have our challenges compared to other nations that have spent significantly more time together.
“This is a task that we have to master first. The Spaniards have been traveling together for a long time. All the other nations have played a lot of test matches, which is definitely an advantage. On the other hand, we obviously have a high quality group and believe we can field a competitive team.”
“I suspect that Austria and Belgium are definitely among the favourites. The Belgians have been improving indoors for a while. Austria is of course the big favourite thanks to the last few years.
“Switzerland did very well at the last Europeans and, looking at the Spaniards’ results in Hamburg, I think they are a team that we shouldn’t underestimate.”
** To find out more about the tournament and buy tickets, go to the event website here: https://ehic2024.be/
** The EuroHockey focus is on a massive February of indoor hockey with events taking place on four consecutive weekends.
For fans around the world, it means lots of top class action to enjoy on EuroHockeyTV with the following top level tournaments all broadcast live on a pay-per-view basis or with an already purchased EHTV pass.
