Aleš Pajovič is a pleasant person. Polite, appreciative in his dealings and despite his impressive height of almost two meters, he never makes the other person feel small. Pajovič moves forward as a coach without pushing himself into the foreground. He teaches the necessity of the collective, of the common path. He doesn’t need stars for the spotlight, he never wants to be one himself. “I just want to have a good life and enjoy it.” When he is introduced to the many titles he has won (including those in the Champions League), it makes him almost uncomfortable. He doesn’t need that. “I’m Aleš,” says the Slovenian (45), “I want someone to shake my hand and look me in the eyes.” He is the kind of person who will immediately help a friend, for example by putting the washing machine through the washing machine Staircase to drag. One call is enough.
Aleš Pajovič is behind the success and always behind his players © AP
This type of interaction, coupled with a wide range of specialist knowledge of the sport of handball, is what sets him apart. He would never claim that he made the fairy tale possible in Germany. It’s always the team that makes everything possible, he would say. Even though the roles in the squad are distributed, with Mykola Bilyk and Lukas Hutecek leading the team, no one is pushing their way to the foreground. Everyone can score goals, but they don’t have to in order to boost their ego. Everyone works together, wins and loses together, stands in a circle after the games and sings songs. Play cards together. Play practical jokes. Pajovič: “That’s important to me. That’s the vibe I’m working towards. The boys have to have fun, then something like this happens.” Austria made handball history in the last two weeks, knocked European champions Spain out of the competition, shone against other major powers and only narrowly missed the semi-finals.
Even in the most heated situations he remains calm. This is the result of early imprinting. In his youth he had many “Balkan trainers”. After every mistake there was shouting and swear words. “That was hard for me. You get scared, pressured and make even more mistakes. I try to always talk positively to my players,” explains Pajovič. After all, even the best would make mistakes. His credo: Forget the mistake immediately, run back and do it better. You can talk about ball losses in peace after the game. Analyze. Learn. We saw at the European Championships how the team fought back after falling behind, he says: “That’s only possible with freedom in the head.” A friendly relationship within the team is important to him: “Many coaches are hard on the players, then they are afraid and don’t talk to them. I dont want that.”
The first call after a game is always to his wife. He was separated from her and the children for a long time, and he longs to see each other again. The family is his center. “It doesn’t matter whether you win or lose. In the end you always go home to your family and they are everything.” As a player, Pajovič always made it a point to have his wife and children with him. “I have to thank my wife for that. She invested everything in the family and that was the only way we managed to be together throughout my entire career.” Like many of his colleagues, he didn’t want to live far away from his loved ones. That wouldn’t have worked.
When Pajovič was brought to HSG Graz in 2011 as a “sensational transfer” by HSG Graz chairman Michael Schweighofer with a special budget, the family initially pitched their tents on the Mur for a year. Four years later and after nomadic years in Ciudad, Kiel, Graz, Magdeburg, Celje and Lübbecke, she found a new anchor point in Graz not far from her Slovenian homeland. First as a player-coach and then just on the line, he began to implement what he had learned from the great coach Talant Dujshebaev in Spain, among others. When he was called up by the national team in 2019, “Mr. Schweighofer”, as he still respectfully calls him in interviews, didn’t put any obstacles in his way. He started his career with the words: “Respect is the most important thing”. And followed them with actions.
In 2011, with the support of Hans Roth, Michael Schweighofer brought Aleš Pajovič into the team of then coach Josip Milković (from left) © GEPA