Eighteen seasons and playing a cumulative 88 EHL Men’s games between them, one anomaly will finally end on October 3rd when Spanish giants Real Club de Polo meet HC Bloemendaal for the first time in the competition’s history.
For Polo’s talisman Xavi Lleonart, it will be a special showdown, lining out against the side with whom he played the leading role in 2018 to win gold wearing the famed orange shirt.
Back with Polo, he is hoping some of his inside knowledge will help the Spanish club come up with a game plan to unlock Bloemendaal.
“I’m lucky because I’ve been on both sides,” he told the EHL website. “On paper, they are the favourites – of course, we know that. But this is KO16 and knock-out hockey so you always have to perform and be in good shape on that day.
“If we play with our weapons, we have a chance to beat them, of course, and we are really confident.Absolutely, we prefer to play against teams like this and it means we will have to give our 100%!”
There remain plenty of links between Lleonart’s time in the Netherlands, not least with Michel van den Heuvel back as coach of the club having held the reins to their 2018 success.
Jasoer Brinkman and Floris Wortelboer also traverse the vintages along with Yannick van der Drift following two seasons in Barcelona with Polo.
In the final, Lleonart’s blockbuster backhand shot was a crucial element in their comeback win over SV Kampong.
“The memories are amazing,” he reflected. “I was trying to win the EHL for so many years with Polo and it was really difficult. With Bloemendaal, I knew that there was a clear opportunity to win it; the team at that time was almost an All-Stars [also featuring Jamie Dwyer, Florian Fuchs and Thierry Brinkman among others].
“The final against Kampong was brutal in terms of intensity and in terms of rivalry. Now, they have Michel again but they are also a completely different team.
“I do know Michel’s style, I know what he wants, the intensity and the identity that they will have. It’s going to be a really difficult game for us. They are really talented players with a lot of experience, with so much rhythm that they can get from the Dutch league.
“We will have to survive those first minutes, trying to adapt to their intensity or their rhythm. Once that first stage is done, we will have to play our hockey to beat them.”
As Bloemendaal have changed, so have Polo. Long-time Egara man Ramon Sala is now in the coaching role, taking over from Carlos Garcia Cuenca who is now with the Spanish women’s team full-time having done both roles last season.
Four key additions have joined with a particularly German flavour: Teo Hinrichs from Mannheimer HC, Benedikt Schwarzhaupt from UHC Hamburg, Robert Duckscheer from HTC Uhlenhorst Mülheim along with Arnau de Bruijn from Junior FC.
On the flip side, nine players have moved on from their panel, notably Marc Reyné to Braxgata; Marc Recasens to HGC and Van Drift to Bloemendaal while Pablo de Abadal, Àlex Reyne, Llorenç Piera and Vicenç Ruiz have retired.
Nonetheless, they started the Spanish league on a winning note and they have big challenges against Club de Campo and Club Egara in the coming week to set them up.
“It’s true that it’s a completely new team with a new staff and Ramon, we are building up the team again. I think the things are going pretty well. He knows the Spanish league inside and out and is helping us build a new identity.
“With three new players from Germany, they bring completely different styles so they are trying to adapt to the Spanish style. We are confident by the KO16 time, the team will be performing pretty well. That’s our main goal to build quickly so the team arrive in London with the team ready to perform.”
With Lleonart on board, they will also have a wealth of knowledge to draw and learn from, something which he also shared with the wider world this summer during the Olympic Games.
His insights X (Twitter) were a fascinating insight from a top player, raising observations and questions about the key talking points, something he reckons he will give more of if the audience wills it.
“Honestly, I received this question many times during the last month,” when asked whether it is something he plans to develop.
“It’s true that I like to watch every single hockey game and I tried to give my opinion [particularly on the Spanish performances]. I think the Olympic Games are a competition everybody in the world is following, not only the hockey fans but also other sports fans and I received a lot of engagement.
“That’s something that tells us hockey has a lot of potential. I just thought it was really interesting because we don’t often get so many of these kind of voices kind of voices.
“I think it would be interesting to have other players or other people from hockey giving their opinion because well it’s a really important sport and I would like to create this community!”
