The foxes Berlin have to do without their top scorer for weeks. World champion Hans Lindberg breaks his hand during the Europa League trip. He also has to interrupt his hunt for the all-time goal record in the Handball Bundesliga. The club reacts quickly.
Severe setback for the league leaders: Füchse Berlin will have to do without their right winger Hans Lindberg in the coming weeks. The Danish world champion and top Berlin goalscorer fell after the game in the European League at Spanish club Bidasoa Irun (40:32) and broke his right hand. This was announced by the Bundesliga leader. “Hans Lindberg’s stroke of fate hits us hard, of course. It’s a bitter loss for our ambitious goals,” said Berlin’s sporting director Stefan Kretzschmar.
The foxes signed former Austrian international Robert Weber to replace Lindberg. Kretzschmar described the 37-year-old, who has Bundesliga experience and is moving from Olympiacos Piraeus to the Spree, as a “ripped off player who knows exactly what the league is about”.
Weber is fifth in the all-time Bundesliga top scorer list and played for SC Magdeburg for ten years until 2019. In the 2014/15 season he became the top scorer with 271 goals after finishing second for two consecutive years. This season the right winger was active for Olympiakos Piraeus in Greece. Now Weber could already make his debut for the foxes in the league home game against HSG Wetzlar on Saturday.
“The injury was of course a shock for us. The luck in the misfortune was that the transfer window was open until tonight and we were able to sign an experienced man for the position in Robert Weber,” said Berlin coach Jaron Siewert: “I hope that he can integrate straight away and I assume that he will play from the start on Saturday.”
Lindberg became world champion with Denmark in January. His injury is also bitter because the 41-year-old is about to break the Bundesliga goal record. He is only 23 goals short of the all-time record set by the South Korean Yoon Kyung-Shin, who scored a total of 2,905 goals for VfL Gummersbach and Hamburger SV.
Lindberg’s contract with the foxes expires at the end of the season. There was a big argument as to why the club no longer wanted to rely on the crowd’s favourite. In November, the Berliners signed 20-year-old Hakun West av Teigum from the Faroe Islands as his successor. At the end of last year, Valter Chrintz, another right winger for Füchse Berlin, was seriously injured.
