Uros Zorman on Paris 2024: Pride, Pain, and a Medal That Got Away
Special Balkan-Handball podcast dedicated to EHF EURO 2026, with 13 episodes you can watch on our YouTube channel, concluded with an appearance by Slovenia national team head coach Uroš Zorman. Slovenia finished the Championship in 8th place, which is a success considering how many squad problems they had, and one of the interesting topics in the conversation was also their 4th-place finish at the Olympic Games in Paris — Zorman’s biggest coaching achievement so far, but also a great sorrow, since a medal slipped away.
“Honestly, it’s a sore spot — a real wound. We really played… we had a lot of problems before the Olympics, we couldn’t beat even my neighborhood, injuries… then we went there and the French smashed us by ten goals. We grew from game to game, everything fell into place, everything we’d been thinking about — but in the end we didn’t win a medal. We were close. Based on what we showed, we should have won it. When you ask me — when people ask me — I don’t like to think back on it. It genuinely hurts, that Lille; it’s etched inside me. I always say: when will I ever be in a situation like that again? I learned that through my career — you take that day when it’s there, not ‘you’ll get another chance.’ I’m forty-something, maybe there will be a few more chances at the Olympics, maybe yes, maybe no — but the opportunity was huge.
I remember when I won my last Champions League with Ciudad Real in 2009 — I was saying, ‘I’m only 29, how many chances do I still have ahead of me?’ And then I barely managed to win another one, with Kielce in 2016,” Zorman was clear, and continued:
“On the other hand, I’m learning, searching, watching. I know I’m on the right path — and all the people around me, those who helped me and who are with me now. That’s a real team: we’re growing, we’re learning. I watch even our second division, I see some action, I take it and work it through at home — I turn it around, change it, adapt it. I don’t have enough time, but I’d love to go to Kiel, to Szeged, for 7–10 days at a time, to see how they work, to see where I’m making mistakes and what I can do better.
As for thinking of myself as ‘successful,’ I don’t look at it that way — but I do know I’m on the right track. If you’re the right kind of person, you’ll always be on the right track, because you’ll always want to watch and learn. There’s no such thing as ‘me and nobody else’,” concluded the coach of Ljubljana’s Slovan.
