Remili’s game: “Responsibilities are exactly what I love"

“You know what the problem is? Handball is more than a passion. It is my life, the be-all and end-all of everything for me.”

In a few words, Nedim Remili sums up everything about his love for the game. “I have always loved playing, I loved being on the court since I was a kid”, he remembers, now aged 29. “My dad was a first-division player, but he always tried to put some distance between his work and us. Of course, going to his training from a very young age must have fuelled something deep inside of me, but he never did it on purpose.”

But being in the arena watching his dad train from early on forced the young Nedim to face his responsibilities from a very young age. He dates back to his first training with a professional team, when he was 15.

“I was in the stands and the coach told me to bring my shoes the next day. And all of a sudden, you are facing the problems you will face all your career on the court: how to truck an opponent? How to make a pass without the ball getting caught? Except that I was 15, playing against guys twice my age,” he smiles.

From then on, Nedim Remili never stood back. Trained to take responsibility from a very young age, he has always loved having the ball in his hands when the game got tight.

“I love to play, in the truest sense of the word. I’m a player,” he says, before explaining: “I love having the ball in my hands and being able to do something with it. I am not selfish, not at all, but of course, I love having the ball and being able to make the right decision in crucial moments.”

And while he played only as a right back at the beginning of his career, Paris Saint-Germain’s coach Raul Gonzalez saw something in Remili that no one had ever seen before. The Spanish coach decided to put him at the centre of the game. For a player who loves having the ball in his hands so much, that should not have been a problem, but the left-hander still took time to adapt. 

“I thought it was going to be easy, but I struggled a lot. I had the ball in my hands, but I suddenly had to learn everything again. Because you are in the middle of everything, and every action, every pass, every shot, has to be the right thing. If you pass when you are supposed to shoot or the other around, you are screwed,” he sums up.

That took Nedim Remili a lot of time to adjust, and it still does, as the 2021 Olympic champion is still playing in the centre back position with the France national team. “There were times I forgot myself because I played too much with my teammates, and there were also times when I forgot the others and played too much for myself,” he remembers. “And this still happens these days. It’s a permanent learning process for me. But I love it!”

Playing on both positions, even if he only plays on the right hand side with One Veszprém HC, has made Nedim Remili a much more complete player. It is not only because of experience that the left-hander now knows exactly “when to speed things up and when to stop the fast break and play half-court. There is a lot more calculation now in the way that I play than there was five years ago. I think a lot more now about how to do the accurate action at a certain moment in the game.”

Come the last five minutes of a crucial game, and Remili’s team and its opponent are neck-and-neck, you will probably see the right back asking for the game.

“Because responsibilities are exactly what I love. And even in the right back position, the position where you have the most responsibilities is when you have the ball in your hands,” says the EHF Champions League finalist with Paris in 2017.

“But there again, I grew up. I might have tried, years ago, to take the ball and find the solution by myself. Now, I might end up just taking the crucial shot. A small part of me might find it frustrating because I want the ball in my hands all the time, but in the meantime, it is what’s best for the team. And that’s the most important thing.”

Next to game masterminds such as Aron Pálmarsson, Luka Cindric and Ludovic Fabregas, one might think it is difficult to find a way to make all of them play at the same time. Indeed, they all love having the ball in their hands and making decisions. But great coaching, according to Remili, leads to all these guys being able to play together.

“Xavi Pascual is the captain of our ship, he knows exactly who can do what on the court. There is so much handball IQ within our team that it’s actually easy for us to play together.”

And while sometimes one of the leaders will have an idea about what to do during a game, the coach is really important to set things straight.

“Once, Xavi planned something during a timeout, and Luka and I decided to go and do our own thing. We did and it failed terribly. Xavi destroyed us afterwards,” he laughs.

But this kind of behaviour, while it might have been Remili’s trademark a while ago, has now become an oddity in his game. “Having turned into a centre back, I know to value the ball and the whole organisation a lot more. Of course, everyone can play his own partition, but at the end of the day, that’s not what is going to make the team win.”

No wonder, then, that Remili will give the example of the EHF Champions League game in Montpellier from the 2023/24 season as one of his most perfect games. Not only did he score seven goals, but he also delivered a huge pile of assists to his teammates.

“I think I delivered 16 of them,” he smiles, before concluding: “A nice team action is what will be the best action for me. I love scoring, but I am happier giving assists. Next time you see me play, look out and you will see that I celebrate assists more than I celebrate goals. And I celebrate even more a well-planned, well-cooked action, even if I am not an active part in it.”

Photos © Roland Peka, PSG/EHF archives, kolektiff