The head coach of the national team of Russia Velimir Petkovic commented on the choice of the squad for the March series matches with the team of Belarus.
— We are close to assemble the strongest possible line-up of the national team of Russia for the first time since the European Cup 2022. We’ve had enough experiments before. We monitored young players, who deserved a chance to get into the main team. We also didn’t manage to gather the optimal composition in the previous meetings with Belarus because of numerous injuries of leading players.
I talked to our players, who play abroad — Denis Zabolotin, Viktor Kireyev, Dmitriy Zhitnikov and Sergey Mark Kosorotov would like to join the national team. It makes me happy!
We would like to see the pivot from HC Meshkov Brest Pavel Andreev in the team. But, unfortunately, he missed a long stretch of time due to back problems. Pavel returned to the court not so long ago and played in too few matches. We thought that we are not going to risk his health and we don’t completely understand yet what exact physical condition he is in now. As soon as Andreev fully recovers, we will be happy to see him in the national team.
We monitor attentively the situation with the left back of HC Chekhovskie medvedi Dmitriy Santalov. He is training on an individual program and won’t be able to help us in the upcoming games. The right back from HC Zenit Dmitriy Kiselev received a painful injury in a recent match against CSKA. The magnetic resonance imaging showed that he will unlikely be able to have a possibility to help the national team and the club in the next matches.
Both Kiselev and Santalov are very important players of our national team and, obviously, it’s a loss before the matches with the team of Belarus.The left wing Igor Kochura has been meaningful for the team lately, but he was injured for quite a long time.
Recently, I talked to the left back of Romanian HC Dobrogea Sud Constants Vitaly Komogorov. He looks confident on left back position now. At the same time, we made a decision not to call him to the national team, because Komogorov remained the only player on his position there, and he is under a significant load. In addition, he has a minor injury. We’ll keep an eye on him.
The national team of Russia should play in different cities of the country, so that supporters from regions could watch the play of the best handball players live. It’s important in terms of our sport promoting. I suppose, we will receive the strong support from the strands.
I should mention, that I’ve already been in Kazan as a tourist. This city impressed me very much! I remember Kul Sharif Mosque, an excellent football stadium, where Rubin performs and many Balkan players used to play for. I managed to visit the Sviyazhsk island.
Concerning Moscow, we played many times at the volleyball arena Dynamo and expect it to be full on Friday evening of March 15.
Chekhov is a handball capital, to a certain extent. No one could move the local club from the first place for many years. There is a large army of fans in this town due to such success. And this is a great merit of Vladimir Maksimov, who made a lot for the club and for the whole Russian handball. I’m looking forward to a great handball atmosphere in Chekhov. I’m happy to play there! — the official HFR web-site quotes the words of Velimir Petkovic.
Photo: vk.com/rh
