Valentini’s game: “When I play handball, I let my instincts speak”

Some players would tell you that their brain is in overload mode when they are on the handball court and that they think about a thousand things a second. Chloé Valentini, Metz Handball’s left wing since 2021, will tell you that being on the court actually gives her brain the space to breathe. “This is what I like about handball. In everyday life, you have a million things in your head every second. When I play handball, I just unplug my brain, don’t think about anything and let my instincts speak,” she says.

This is what she does when she runs on a fast break to outrun the opponents coming back on the defensive line after a shot. She has done it again, multiple times since the beginning of the season, offering the fans worldwide a couple of amazing actions on social media. This ability to sprint forward at the perfect moment is something that “feels natural” to her, as she points out.

“I love doing it, and I also like what it represents. The offenders have been attacking for 30 seconds, sometimes more, they don’t score, and bam! Within two seconds, my team has scored an easy goal and they have to go back at it,” she laughs, quite happy to outplay her opponents. “It’s probably one of the things on the court that I love doing the most.”

It’s not an easy thing to do, though. If you make your move too late, there is no chance for you to outrun the opponents running back towards their goal. But if you start running too early, there is a chance the player you are defending on will be left alone and have a wide gap to score. “I will be honest and there are times when I lose that bet. But training the way we train at Metz Handball, with a lot of full-court exercises, has gotten me better at it,” explains the 31-year-old.

As in a lot of other playing areas, video has a lot of importance. To be able to identify which kind of player you have in front of you might help you take a decisive advantage. “I will behave differently whether the opposing back-court player is able to jump, remain in the air and pass to the wing I defend against, or if she is just the shooting kind,” she explains.

“But this is — I say that with a lot of humility — not something that I think too much about. Like, my body actually knows what to do on the court without my brain telling it not to. I watch the video during the team sessions before the game, I am very focused on it, I work a lot during training, but then I kind of do things without thinking about them.”

As a result, Chloé Valentini will often finish the game and realise: “Honestly, I did not calculate much. I just did things how I felt them, but more often than not, it worked.”

The same thing actually goes with her shooting technique. The Tokyo 2020 Olympic gold medallist is not fond of studying the opponents’ goalkeeper on video before the games she plays. “I used to do it, but then I was thinking too much during the game and that proved not to be good,” she remembers. Now that she has been around a good few years, both with her clubs of Besançon and Metz Handball and also with France, she relies on her experience to go past the goalkeepers.

“They know me, I know them, so it’s all about still trying to trick them or outpower them in the areas they are the best at,” she explains, before taking us deeper into this way of thinking: “I played with Johanna Bundsen last season. She tends to go out of her posts a lot and move towards the shooter, because she is tall. So she is quite good at stopping the lob shot. So players against her will try something else, go for a lower impact. But why not try to lob her because she expects us not to?”

Being a wing at the top level is, really, a lot about mind games. But any player will act completely differently whether she has two seconds to prepare her shot, like at the end of a fast break, or just a fraction of a second.

“When I go on a fast break, I don’t think. I take a look at the keeper and I just shoot where she is not. In small angles, things are different,” explains the EHF Champions League Women 2025/26 winner. “Especially if the ball comes to me in a shitty way, like if I have to grab it low. Then I have to organise myself, think about jumping towards the far post, then look at where the keeper is and find a solution.”

Experience and years spent playing the game are certainly of great help when it comes to small time-frame decisions such as this. “This is another area where my body just knows what to do. I don’t look at where I am going to shoot, I try to give information to the goalkeeper that will lead her to think I am going to do something I am not. The look is a great trick, but also your body, whether you lean towards one side or the other,” she adds, before laughing: “But do you think that, within a tenth of a second, I can think about all of this?”

And if how to score in narrow-angle shots is not something that the French wing thinks about on the spot, then what about the in-flight goals that she scores from incredible positions? She did it again in round 4 against Nykøbing Falster Håndbold, when she grabbed a court-long pass from her goalkeeper teammate Sabrina Novotná while in the air to score without her feet touching the court in between.

“I may not have the biggest jump for a wing but I think I have great motor skills,” she says, in a rare moment of praising herself. These abilities might come from trying a variety of sports when she was a kid, before settling on handball. “I tried gymnastics, judo and horse riding, which are sports where your feet do not touch the ground and your body has to locate itself in space within a fraction of a second.”

But this ability to know where the goalkeeper is, where the goals are and where she is on the court while in the air also comes from years of handball practice. When you train everyday, sometimes twice a day, for 15 years, there are things that become instinctive. “No matter where I am on the court, I know where the lines are and where the goals are. I can not really explain it, that is just how things are, but I guess it’s a real asset,” she explains.

As one can see, handball really feels natural to Chloé Valentini. No need for her to go through hours of videos to know what she has to do on the court. No need for her to arrive three hours before game time at the arena to get used to the surroundings. She will, in fact, let her instincts speak.

“I will be focused during the video but then comes warm-up time, everything has vanished,” she decrypts, before continuing: “Then, during the Champions League anthem, I take five seconds to think about the three things I have to remember to do on the court. If my opponent goes inside to be a second line player or things like these. And then, lights out again and I just play.”

One thing that the French star — who was elected the best left wing at the EHF Excellence Awards 2026 for the third year in a row — changed over the last few years is how she reflects on her own performances. The birth of her daughter, just over a year ago, certainly helped Chloé Valentini be kinder to herself. “Before that, having a bad training session would have me thinking about it for three hours,” she remembers. “I try to be more indulgent with myself these days. Maybe I missed everything at training in the morning, but maybe the reason is that my daughter had a toothache and I only slept for two hours.”

And the same thing actually applies during games on the court. As you will know by now, the perfect game only happens once in a while. “There is no point focusing on what you just missed. It’s ok to miss if the goalkeeper has made a great save, that does not have to keep you down for 10 minutes,” she says before concluding: “I used to put spokes in my own wheels sometimes. I am much nicer to myself now. It’s ok to miss a shot and if you did, there is no point in questioning your whole career on it. Just move forward.”

Photos © Metz Handball, Uros Hocevar / kolektiff, Peka Roland, Anze Malovrh / kolektiff