The women’s senior national team of Serbia performed testing on COVID-19 at the beginning of the preparations in the EHF week, which they will spend in the training process in the center of the Football Association of Serbia in Stara Pazova. Coach Ljubomir Obradović had to change the original list last week, due to the situation related to the coronary virus pandemic, which now does not include most of the girls he was counting on.
We tested ourselves, we are waiting for the results. We follow the measures of the Crisis Staff and all recommendations. We all know what to do. The plan has changed, only some of the seniors are here with us. The recommendations of the clubs, French, Romanian and Hungarian, are that the girls do not go to the gathering, because they will be isolated for 15 days after returning. He also threatens to reduce their salary, punish them, so I told the girls that we have no right to put them in an awkward position, although it is an obligation in the EHF week that the clubs have to let the girls go. We decided not to punish the girls, no one got anything with such an outcome. Kojic and Risovic will come from Ljubljana on Wednesday, I see that the situation with Slovenia is now normalized, so there should be no problems. We also called in reserves, but there are a lot of problems there as well. Some powerful people, club directors, appear on behalf of the girls so that they can’t come because of their obligations at the faculty, and we know that the school is online, you can work from here, it’s a very good connection. There are also problems here, so that’s it for us at the moment – says Obradović and notes that the junior national team will be at the gathering in Pazova at the same time:
We have made a program according to which seniors will train from 9 to 11, that is, from 5 to 7 pm, and juniors from 11 to 13 and 19 to 21 hours. The conditions are good, we are here alone, we will not have contacts, we are following what is happening. The situation is much better in Serbia than in Romania and Hungary, so we are on the red list again.
The national team has not gathered since December 2019, when the World Cup in Japan ended due to the coronavirus virus pandemic, and a new competition is expected in December in Norway.
– We gather from competition to competition. We will do a lot of things and we have done so far. I am not helpless in that regard. It’s not worth whining about. If it was worth it, they would cry every day. We do not have a clear position of the EHF on this situation. Hungarians and Romanians are gathering, not letting our players go? We know there are a lot of positive girls out there. If they come together, why can’t we? How is it going, who can explain it to us?
The national team will be together until next Saturday.
