He announces the revolution at Rapid after the nightmare season: “No more extraordinary salaries”

Champion of Romania in 2021/2022, CS Rapid had a nightmare season: 7th place in the championship, eliminated from the Romanian Cup and from the EHF European League in the quarter-finals.

Against the background of these results came parting ways with head coach Laurent Bezeau.

With all the goals missed and only a few matches left in this campaign, the head of the club, Vlad Andronescu, announces a paradigm shift starting next season.

He claims that Rapid will seek to promote the young sportswomen it has registered and complete the team with promising foreign players, not with certainties that would burden the budget.

The president of CS Rapid announces the revolution in the women's handball team

– 19 sections within the club. You won the women's basketball title, but overall how would you say this season went?
– I can say that it was satisfactory, the exception being handball. We had a tough legacy, a team that had recently been crowned champions. The team is no longer living up to the expectations of the fans, but we have started a reconstruction process, which will continue in the same way as in other sports: we want to put the emphasis, little by little, on Romanian players.

Yes, we like the foreign athletes who come to Romania, they bring added value and are models for our young people, they are very useful in the gearing of any sports club, even necessary, but I believe that we must use this resource, the foreign athletes, to educate young Romanians.

That's what we try in all sports. In handball even we want to rejuvenate the squad, bring in young players, even the foreign ones should be a little younger and be complemented by those who are already at the club, with experience.

– Do you think that this model could be successful in a championship where there are teams like CSM Bucharest, Gloria Bistrița and others, which invest massively in foreign players?
– I agree, but my strategy is for a little longer term, I think it will give 100% results. I believe the other teams will also approach this strategy. I don't think it's the best thing to bring in the most expensive players to get results. I can give you an example from football, PSG, who at one time had Messi, Neymar and Mbappe and won nothing. The moment they left, PSG won the Champions League.

I consider it a model to follow, a much better, healthier strategy, to invest in the players you have, in the characters you believe in. In this way, you follow the ambition, the pride, the athlete's desire to realize himself, to perform. I don't believe that the financial incentive should go to performance, but should come as a consequence of performance, not be an incentive for it.

Vlad Andronescu: “The coach was changed because of his personal desire. He wanted to be close to his family”

– You talk about a reconstruction, but can it still be a reconstruction as long as the coach has just been changed?
– Yes, the reconstruction continues, because it is at the level of strategy, direction to stop paying extraordinary salaries so that athletes are primarily stimulated financially. We have a model taken over, the reconstruction process is still being done here. The coach was changed more or less because of the results, but also because of a personal desire of his, who wanted to be close to his family, he realized that it is very difficult to stay away from her. Somehow, the results during the season, what happened to the team, were influenced by the fact that the coach did not have the best family situation. He also has a 7-year-old child at school, very difficult for his wife to manage alone, in France.

– 7th place at present and eliminations in the quarters both in the Romanian Cup and in the European League. Supporters see it as a very bad season…
– It's normal for it to be like that, the fans want Rapid to be in first place in this sport. But that doesn't mean that there can't be such courses in the life of a club. I would like to compare with Juventus, who had won I don't know how many Champions Leagues in football, got relegated for various reasons, then started from scratch, rebuilt and managed to get back to the top.

I don't think it's such a big problem that we have a season where we didn't achieve any of our goals. It is part of the rebuilding process, we have to accept failure in certain situations. Failure is something you always learn from. I think that failure is very important in the life of an athlete, but you have to know how to channel it positively in order to achieve medium and long-term results.

We can't always be champions, that's what I explain to everyone. Every year, in every sport, there are 3-4 teams that want the title. Unfortunately, he gets it only once, which can be, as in the case of the CSM, 8 years in a row. This does not mean that Bistrita does not have to invest anymore. Failure is part of the athlete's life and should not be dramatized.

Vlad Andronescu is president of CS Rapid from September 2024