Can Atlason say goodbye with a trophy?

As soon as the EHF Cup Quarter-final draw result was known, Saint-Raphael Var Handball coach Joël Da Silva openly expressed his disapproval of having to play against fellow French team Chambery Savoie Handball.

And he is not the only one who would have liked to play against a foreign team like SC Magdeburg. “It was either one club or the other and I think, handball-wise, none is easier to face,” explains Arnor Atlason, the Icelandic centre back.

“But at some point, you’ve got to choose if you’d rather play against a team that you already face three times a season, or one that you might only face once in your career,” Atlason went on. And in fact, in the club’s young European career, they have not met many foreign teams.

Saint-Raphael still have many players in its ranks who have had the pleasure of playing European cup finals before. Geoffroy Krantz who won two Cup Winners’ Cup trophies as well as one EHF Cup title with VfL Gummersbach and Alexandru Simicu who played last season’s EHF Cup Finals with HSV Hamburg and two years ago with HCM Constanta are among them.

But Arnor Atlason, who arrived in France three seasons ago, is perhaps the player who has travelled around the most, including one trip to Cologne to the VELUX EHF FINAL4 2012 with AG Kobenhavn.

“It was an amazing experience, that’s for sure, and I hope the experience I got from it might help us on our way to Nantes,” the 31-year-old explains.

“As individuals, I think we’re all grown-ups in the team. We’ve all got a few seasons behind us. But as a team, we still have to build our history, which might explain why we struggled in the group phase. We …

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