What Xenia Smits has to say in her defense? “I really enjoy playing in defense,” says the defender with a smile. The 30-year-old national handball player fully admits this. She is also used offensively, in the backcourt, but celebrating her own goals doesn’t mean as much to her as preventing goals at the back. That’s how it is with Xenia Smits.
The European Championship comes to an end for Smits and the German national team on Wednesday. In the final main round game, your team will face Slovenia in Vienna (3:30 p.m., Sportdeutschland.tv), but then it’s all about nothing. The German team has long since missed the semi-finals they dreamed of, as well as the game for fifth place. Three games were clearly won during the tournament, against Ukraine, Iceland and Switzerland. However, the three decisive games were clearly lost: in the preliminary group 22:29 against the Netherlands, in the main round 22:30 against Denmark and on Monday evening 27:32 against Norway.
:Germany on the verge of elimination – and far from the best
The German handball players are about to be eliminated from the European Championships. After what will probably be the last game in Vienna, the work will follow, because the World Cup will follow in autumn 2025 – in Germany and the Netherlands.
In the end, the German players probably didn’t really enjoy this European Championship because the three defeats were too clear. Xenia Smits from German champions HB Ludwigsburg was still one of the best defensive players at this European Championship: She blocked the most throws in the entire tournament, she always goes to the point without compromise and had the hope that a stable defense would be the basis for a successful tournament could. Overall, however – primarily offensively – the German selection was not competitive against the top nations this time.
It’s a good thing that Smits doesn’t have to ponder and argue for too long now. There are still two Bundesliga games left this year, which is tiring, but Smits says of himself: “I have a hard time sitting still.” And what would be better than just continuing to play handball after a poor European Championship?
For the 16th time in a row, Germany missed the semi-finals of a World and European Championship
The constant urge to move hasn’t changed since she turned 30 in April. For the Antwerp native, who received her German passport at the age of 19, not having to sit still means that she plays with her club in the Bundesliga and the Champions League, and with the national team in European and World Championships; that her life consists almost exclusively of handball and a considerable amount of her free time is also spent on voluntary trips to the weight room. Especially in her five years in Metz (2015 to 2020), she says, she learned how athletic work works and how important it is.
Her club, with whom she became champions for the third time in a row this year and with whom she even reached the Champions League final, benefits from this – and the national team usually also benefits from this. Unfortunately not this time.
However, it was Smits and the defense who were least responsible for Germany not making it to the semi-finals for the 16th time in a row at the World and European Championships. At the European Championships in 2008, this was achieved for the last time with fourth place, under national coach Armin Emrich and with the best backcourt player in the tournament at the time: Grit Jurack. The German team hasn’t had a shooter like that since then, and that’s another reason why they haven’t made the breakthrough to the top of the world that they’ve been longing for for 16 years.
:Germany’s greatest handball player
1.87 meters, left-handed in the right backfield, powerful throw: Viola Leuchter embodies the medal hopes of the German national team at the European Championships in Austria. They are more justified than they have been for a long time.
All the better for Smits that she still has big goals with Ludwigsburg in the Bundesliga and the Champions League. The season continues on the Friday after Christmas with an away game at TuS Metzingen, and two days later they also host HSG Blomberg-Lippe on Sundays. It’s challenging in terms of the stress, but for handball players who have trouble sitting still, it’s a perfect end to the year.
Player of the season? “The award makes me happy, it’s something special,” says Smits
Maybe Smits will relax a little over the turn of the year and think about a year 2024 that was packed with action: German champion again, in the Champions League final for the first time, voted Bundesliga player of the season for the first time, at the Olympics for the first time . And then Smits was elected to the world association’s athletes’ commission. “Jogi Bitter was a member of this commission before me, and it is important for us as the German Handball Association to continue to be represented by one person,” she says. The first meeting is next year.
Being named player of the season in the Bundesliga rewards all the work that Smits puts in. However, such an individual award contradicts your idea of team sports a little. “In football, Toni Kroos raised the question of why there is an individual award in a team sport,” she says: “I think that way too, but I was still very happy. The award makes me happy, it’s something special.”
And so the Olympic year of 2024 will go down as a special one in her career. “I’ve experienced a lot of very special things,” she says, adding: “Some things feel like they happened a long time ago. “That’s how you notice how time flies.” And how little Xenia Smits sat still again.
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