Hungary has nothing to lose and a lot to learn at EuroVolleyW

Two years ago Hungary hosted the EuroVolley themselves, the home event was the last one for several key players of the Hungarian national team. Now under guidance of a new coach and with many young players in the roster, Hungary hopes to progress to the next round of Europe’s prime competition, but their current situation is not easy, as on Tuesday they suffered their third defeat losing to the hosts of Pool C, Croatia. The team led by Jakub G?uszak is improving their performance match by match, but it was not enough to stop Croatia, which beat them 3-1. Having one win and four points they are still in contention for a spot in the next round, but they desperately need to win their last encounter against Belarus, even if their fate is not only in their hands.

Coach Jakub G?uszak instructing his players during one of the EuroVolley matches

“If we had won the match against Switzerland, I could assess this tournament very well. We make many rotations in the squad, we have a very young team and many rookies – more than 50% of our team are players who made their debut, so it’s a valuable experience for them. We didn’t manage to win against Switzerland [losing in tie-break], even if we had this match under control. Too quickly we started to think that we would win it and we relaxed a bit and then the opponent used their chance. But I can assess this EuroVolley in a positive way despite the fact that we repeat some mistakes – i.e, we have many errors in counter-attacks. We have many occasions to score, but we are not using them. Too many freeballs, we are not aggressive enough on the net, these are little things but they make a difference. Tomorrow is another match against Belarus, the last in Zadar, but I hope that it is not the last at the EuroVolley,” said Jakub G?uszak.

Hungary after claiming their openining win against Slovakia

The 35-year-old Polish has been appointed head coach of Hungary in early-2020, and obviously the pandemic outbreak and lack of competition didn’t make it an easy start of cooperation. “Our goal was to have more fresh blood in the team, young girls who have potential to grow in the future and to be a strength of this team. It’s a lot of work to do ahead of them, on their technique, on their ability to read the game, on how to analyse the game tactically on the court, because these elements still don’t look like I would like to. But week by week it looked better. There is a lot of work to do, not only on Volleyball aspects, but also on the mental side, attitude towards training and the match. These are the fields we have to work on. I think if these aspects are better, the quality of the games is going to be higher as well. But we didn’t have enough time. We have only been together for three months, so it’s hard to develop in such a short period of time. But I see that they want to learn and follow this way. They see that the work which we have already done brings some results and that it makes them better players already. But it’s a long way to go.”

G?uszak has been familiar with Hungarian Volleyball, being head coach of Vasas Óbuda Budapest since 2018 til the end of this season, winning with the club both national championship (2019) and the Hungarian Cup (2020).

“It made it easier, because I had contact with these players on a daily basis. I was aware of the main problems and what we had to focus on. But it’s a huge amount of work to do and we need a lot of patience. Players have to be patient during these processes and work, they cannot get frustrated when something doesn’t work once. Sometimes it might not work, but you have to know what you do wrong to learn this lesson and not repeat it in the future.”
Jakub G?uszak
head coach of Hungary

Despite not the most promising results, the team has always stayed positive on the court and it’s important for the head coach.

“We have nothing to lose. We enter the court and we fight, we fight also with our flaws. We motivate the girls, we made a deal as a team that no matter what’s going to happen here, we have to stay together, fight until the end and support each other, because in my opinion this is important…

…In difficult moments you have to show your character. It’s only a shame that we don’t have one more win, because it would give them wings, because they have worked really hard during this tournament to make things better. Now not everything is in our hands, but let’s see. We have to stay positive and stick together.”
Jakub G?uszak head coach of Hungary

It’s interesting that Jakub G?uszak himself was a bronze medalist of the EuroVolley 2009, when he worked with the women’s national team of Poland as a statistician. Twelve years later he made his debut as a head coach of national team. “Actually I thought at some point that in the past I won a bronze medal with the national team of my home country at EuroVolley, now I’m older and many things have changed in my life, I developed myself as a coach and it’s my debut as a coach of a national team. I feel good at this tournament. I think that I did everything I could to prepare this team as well as I was able to. I know that I also have to keep learning and this kind of tournament gives a lot of experience.”