Kiko Costa: "We all need to keep playing with a smile on our face"

“For sure, people know how we play and what we are able to do. But we are a very young team, most of us are between 21 and 25 and we have a lot of room for progress,” confirms the 20-year-old right back.

How can Sporting, then, keep on surprising their opponents and keep on winning games? “We can not change everything, and we must not, actually. Because what we do is good. We have to work hard every day, do better every day but also remain true to ourselves. The way we play is who we are and we can not deny ourselves.”

The young left-handed player has been touted as the next big thing for quite a few seasons now. Costa created havoc in the 2022/23 season, when he scored 97 goals — including 12 the qualification round — in the EHF European League, even though Sporting went out in the quarter-finals.

While there might be pressure for him to keep scoring as many goals, he insists the fun must remain the priority. “My mental health is really important, I now have someone that I can speak with whenever I need. Handball must remain a game, we all need to keep playing with a smile on our face and enjoy the fact that people pay tickets to see us in the arena,” he explains.

Costa has been firing on all cylinders since the beginning of the season, scoring 26 goals over the four first rounds of the EHF Champions League. “I need to change my game a little bit to keep evolving and surprising my opponents,” he says, before explaining: “Mathias Gidsel is a player I really look up to. He runs, defends, attacks for 60 minutes, all at the same level. Those are all the things that I want to do, I don’t want to be a player that scores 10 goals every game and that’s it.”

For now, Costa and Sporting will have to show another face when they host Veszprém for the round 5 Match of the Week on Thursday. Last week, they were crushed by HBC Nantes (28:39) in front of their home crowd, in what was, according to Costa, “one of the worst games we ever played. 11:23 was the score at the half-time break, and that says it all.”

But far from sticking to the bad memories of last week, the Sporting players have already turned their minds to round 5. “You don’t want these moments to happen, but sometimes they do. But that does not change the fact that we are confident in what we do, after all, you can’t sum up one season into just one game. The game against Veszprém is going to be a very tough one, but I believe we can pull off a good performance.”

The Sporting win against the Hungarian powerhouse last season (39:30) was one of the highlights of the season for the Portuguese club. Anyone who attended the game in Pavilhao Joao Rocha will remember the cheers of the fans. And Costa expects the same kind of support on Thursday night.

“Remember the atmosphere in the arena for that game last season? I expect the same on Thursday," Costa says. "Even if we played terrible against Nantes last week, our fans cheered us up through the game. It is an important match, we don’t want to lose three in a row, but with our fans, we feel like we are so much stronger.”

photos © Henrik Hansen (main image); João Pedro Morais (other images)