By Sports Reporter/Doha


Saudi Arabia national team player Mohamed Al-Zaer, who has been with the team for 10 years, talks about his team’s opportunities at Qatar 2015, which began today. Excerpts...

Are you looking forward to Qatar 2015?
Of course. For ten years I have been with the national team, I joined when I was 18 years old, but so far I have only competed at one World Championship. It was the last one, 2013 in Spain. We finished 19th—the best result in our handball history. I am happy with our performance there, the quality of handball we showed was very good. But Qatar 2015 will be different on many levels. The Qataris have done a tremendous job so far in the preparation of the event and have put in a lot of effort. This is a very special country which has accomplished an amazing number of things in recent years with their focus on sports. The playing halls are exceptional—it will be a fantastic event to remember.

What is Saudi Arabia’s goal at the World Championship?
I hope that Saudi Arabia will perform strongly in Qatar and play good games. At the last World Championship we finished 19th. This time we have a young inexperienced team and our goal is to finish the same or in a better rank. Then, at future World Championships, with more experience a better place could be the goal. Therefore we will need a lot of hard games for our young players, a lot of tight decisions, high-level clashes and also victories.

Saudi Arabia only received their Qatar 2015 berth when Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates backed out. How do you see that?
For us that was great news of course. At the Asian Championship in Bahrain—which serves as qualification for the World Championship—we underperformed and only finished fourth. That is easily explained with some squad changes our team currently undergoes: some experienced players finished their international careers while not all of our juniors are ready to play on international level. Still, getting a last-minute spot and a chance to play comes as fantastic news for us, but also as very sad news for some of my Bahraini player friends.

What changes is the Saudi team going through?
The national team now consists of many younger players, we are going through a generation change. A lot of junior players get their chance to play for the national team. And the World Championship is a fantastic opportunity for them to show what they can do. Aged 28 I am one of four or five remaining experienced players who shall lead the team. Marching first of all is Captain Hassan Al-Janabi, our line player, who brings vast experience. We will see how it goes for him, he has been out for the last six months due to surgery on his left knee. Right now the outlook on whether he will play or not is fifty-fifty, but he will for sure be with the team. Also the team can rely on playmaker Hussain Al-Mohsin—he was a replacement Captain at the Asian Championship.

Who are the key players in your team?
Right winger Ahmed Al-Abdulali is one of our top scorers and a man to watch. Also middle back and playmaker Hussain Al-Mohsin and the goalkeeper are our key players. I would not describe myself as another key player, but the coaches seem to like me as I can be used in all positions. As a right-handed back court player I am used to playing left or middle back. At the Asian Championships last January/February, I was a line player. On my club sometimes they also put me in the right back position. For me, changing positions is not a problem, I actually like it.

How would you describe your new coach?
Our national team coach, Serbian Goran Dzokic, is in his second year now. He succeeded Croatian Nenad Klajic after the 2013 World Championships in Spain. This is his first assignment in the Gulf region. Before that he was coaching clubs in Spain. Goran is a very good coach, especially with all the younger players we have. The team has made impressive steps forward, match by match we grow stronger. Also the young players get a lot of playing time and responsibility on the court which really helps them to develop. But I must also mention the great work Nenad Klajic did beforehand. Goran can now take the team to a new level.

How has your preparation for Qatar 2015 been so far?
Coach Goran Dzokic took us on several camps, first for ten days to Jeddah in western Saudi Arabia, then 15 days in Hungary and Slovenia from the middle to the end of December. Besides hard training and some test games we focused on playing as a team. In the beginning of January we went to Sharm-El-Sheik, Egypt, to compete in a Four Nations Tournament with the hosts,
Morocco and Brazil. Egypt and Brazil are also going to the World Championships in Qatar. All these high-level preparation games are very important for us.

Where do the players of the Saudi Arabian national team play, in the Saudi league?
All of our young players play in Saudi Arabia. Mostly, we collect our international experience at Asian or Arab Championships. In my country it is not easy to become a professional player in a foreign country. The reason for hardly having any players in other countries is that all of our sportsmen are soldiers in the army. Therefore we simply can’t leave the country for a long period of time. I can only think of our middle back Hussain Al-Mohsin, who went to play in the United Arab Emirates for one year as a professional player. But all others, including all our young players, are not professionals but basically soldiers playing handball. In Saudi Arabia everybody who wants to become an athlete will have to become a soldier. And in the army you are assigned to a job called sportsman. I am an army sportsman as well.

What is your agenda after the World Championship?
After the World Championship we will return to Saudi Arabia and play the Army Championship, consisting of four teams. This must not be confused with the Saudi League. Basically we have two parallel leagues—the Saudi league with our clubs and the Army league with four army clubs: Air Defence, where I play, Air Force, the Navy and the Desert Scouts. The Army league is much more exciting and of a higher level, as all the best players compete. Each team of the four consists of players from different army stations, who all have their clubs. So for instance the Air Defence coach can select the best players from the clubs of the six Air Defence bases in the kingdom—very much like a national team coach. At Air Defence we are a good team but often end up in third place. Traditionally the Air Force is the best team. Then there is also the Saudi, which is very tight this year. It has already gone over eight rounds, and is on a break now for the World Championships including the preparation before as well as the following Army Championship. After that the Saudi league will restart and be concluded.

Your opinion on your Group D opponents?
We have an incredibly hard group, if not the hardest of the four groups, with Denmark, Poland, Germany, Russia and Argentina. As preparation we have watched many games of all our opponents. In my opinion, group favourites and the hardest opponents will be Denmark and Poland. But then again we will try to play hard and to play for ourselves in every game. There is no team that we cannot beat. But we are aware that with our young team at a major tournament every match is going to be extra hard. We might have a good chance of winning over Argentina. They are a strong team, despite us beating them at the 2003 World Championship in Portugal. Given that we want to go through to the next tournament stage, we will also have to beat either Russia or Germany. In my opinion Russia are the easier ones to beat of these two. But even if Russia might be seen as if they were in a crisis, they all have a strong mind and a great deal of professional players who train handball a lot. They all know what they are doing. Germany simply have too many good players. We are aware that some of their bigger names are not coming to Qatar and that there are a lot of young players and a new coach. But they are all incredibly strong.