RK Vojvodina Novi Sad director Darko Jevtic: Playing at EHF Champions League is on our agenda
RK Vojvodina Novi Sad won the 11th Serbian championship in a row. The EHF Cup 2023 winners made a good step forward at EHF European League 2023/2024 campaign, where they ended close to TOP 12 phase in group with SG Flensburg Handewitt, Bjerringbro Silkeborg and Kadetten Schaffhausen. The next goal for the team from “Slana bara” hall is to join EHF Champions League in a situation when the elite competition gets the new system with more teams in the future:
– We don’t have the Europa League guaranteed, we have an invitation to the EHF Cup. With the atmosphere, the results, the attention, we won the group stage of the Europa League last season. We played good matches, had two equal half-times with the winner, a team like Flensburg. We are waiting for the decision of the EHF on which format we will award. Furthermore, we are ready for the qualifiers or the group stage, and it is difficult to talk about the goals until we see the draw. This season, RK Vardar finished in the qualifiers where they lost to Rhein Neckar Lowen. That can happen to us too, if we get a Bundesliga team with a budget of 10 million and get into a serious problem – said RK Vojvodina director Darko Jevtic for Balkan-Handball.com and added:
Considering what we have seen in the previous two seasons at full Slana bara (2.000 capacity), the question remains: when will Vojvodina start playing the biggest games at SPENS Arena (7.000 capacity)?
– I promised you personally, in the company of the mayor of Novi Sad, before the match with Kadeten, that if we pass, we will play against Berlin in the large hall of SPENS. That is my biggest regret from this season, bigger than the defeat against RK Partizan in the Cup at home. It would be one of the biggest sports matches in Novi Sad in the past decade, with I’m sure more than 5,000 fans. It is clear to everyone that Vojvodina has its own agenda to play in the group stage of the EHF Champions League in the 2025/2026 season. Whether through placement, wild-card or coefficient, that’s what we want. We will certainly not be able to play the Champions League in Slana Bara, which is a training hall for that level. We simply have to be focused on SPENS, and our wishes and discussions are going in that direction so that Novi Sad gets an adequate hall of 4-4,500 seats where we could play in the Champions League. Vojvodina is not running away from SPENS, and already in the next season, under the circumstances, we will have to test ourselves in that big hall as well. It’s time to get used to it – said Jevtic.
