Handball superstar retires: Schmid was so good that the Germans wanted to naturalize him

Too much fun to be a leader

The nickname “Messi of handball” is often used when it comes to honoring Schmid’s achievements. To this day he refrains from making such comparisons. Despite all his successes and all his ambition, he always retained a certain humility and down-to-earth attitude. “Andy is almost too nice to be a good leader,” former Nati coach Arno Ehret once said.

Schmid interprets the role of a leader in his own way. In the national team he always has an open ear for his younger teammates. He is partly responsible for putting the strict hierarchies of the past on the shelf. “Andy is the ultimate leader: what he says always has meaning,” German handball legend Stefan Kretzschmar once told Blick. “He treats his fellow human beings fairly and has a positive charisma. I wish I had such a leader before. It’s a shame he isn’t recognized enough for this role.”

Talented and sensitive

Kretzschmar guides Schmid’s time at Rhein-Neckar Löwen as a TV pundit and sports director for other Bundesliga clubs. He saw how the Swiss was labeled a bad signing in his first season in 2010/11 and almost returned to Switzerland. But Schmid perseveres. Kretzschmar: “It was clear from early on that Andy was a talented and sensitive player. Crucial to his career was that he got a coach who trusted him unconditionally as number 1.”

The most important coach in Schmid’s career is Nikolaj Jacobsen. He brought the then two-time Swiss champion from Amicitia Zurich to Silkeborg in Denmark in 2009. In 2014, the Dane followed the Swiss to the Lions. There he meets a dejected Andy Schmid, who lost the championship race against THW Kiel the season before due to two bad goals – the most difficult moment of his career.

Jacobsen remembers: “When I came to Mannheim, Andy looked at me and said: ‘Niko, you have to promise me that one day we will become German champions’.” Two years later, the warm-blooded Dane fulfills his promise. The Lions became champions in 2016 and 2017 and won the DHB Cup in 2018.

The request from Germany

Schmid has been so successful in winning the Lions titles that the German Handball Association is considering naturalizing the Swiss and allowing him to play for their own national team. After all, country changes are not uncommon in handball. And the timing is perfect, as Schmid takes a break from the then notoriously unsuccessful Swiss national team due to overload at the club. Nevertheless, he rejected Germany’s request.

Schmid therefore adds another successful chapter to his career with the national team: in 2020 he will lead Switzerland to a major tournament again after a dry period of fourteen years. The European Championships in Sweden will be followed by the Corona World Cup in Egypt in 2021 and now the conclusion in 2024 in its long-standing sporting home Germany. A cinematic conclusion that Schmid does not like at all – at least according to his wife Therese: “She says I am not a romantic at all.”