I am Vanja Radic, a 41-year-old handball goalkeeper coach. I first encountered sports during my childhood in Bosnia, but not in a club or in any official setting. In my home country, children played outside a lot, and I engaged in various games and sports from the moment I learned to walk. I played a lot of football, especially with my brother and other children.
Ending up in handball was actually a big coincidence. I was 14 years old, quite old to start a new sport. Our country had been isolated for four or five years due to the war, and practicing sports was certainly not easy. I had never even heard of handball until one day at school, my teacher asked who among us students would like to play handball as a goalkeeper. A girl who was supposed to play hadn’t shown up. I was the only one who wanted to play in goal, perhaps because playing as a goalkeeper in handball isn’t easy, and it can even be a bit dangerous if you’re not familiar with the sport. That’s how it started. It was a huge coincidence, but it began a significant path in my life.
Sports career
I started sports for fun, but when I was 18, I signed my first professional contract with a club in my hometown. After a few years, I moved to Croatia to play professionally. I also had the opportunity to play for the Bosnia and Herzegovina national team, albeit quite late, in 2006 and 2007. A beautiful memory was when we won the European Handball Federation’s Challenge Trophy in 2006. Later, the women’s national team had a long hiatus with no games or gatherings. While playing in Croatia, I was voted the best goalkeeper in the Croatian league in my first season, which was a big surprise because no one knew who I was when I moved to Croatia. Later in my career, I also played in the European Cup and qualifying games. I benefited greatly from these experiences when I started my coaching career.
I played as a professional goalkeeper from the age of 18 to 27 and then a few more seasons in Finland, focusing more on coaching. My career has had three phases: first, I played for fun, then I was a professional goalkeeper, and finally, a professional coach.
Sports has played a significant role in my life. I enjoy all kinds of games and movement, and that’s why I love handball so much. Sports has been very important in every phase of my life. I started playing soon after the war. I think I played partly to escape everything happening around me. I still train actively because it makes me feel better. I feel I have more energy and can do my job as a coach better if I also train myself.
Moving to Finland was another big coincidence in my life. It happened in 2011. I had been playing professionally in Croatia for seven years when I happened to meet a few Finnish friends in Zagreb. We agreed that I would visit Finland. It was my first visit to the country. I was lucky because it was June, and the weather was very good, which is not so common in Finland.
I came for three weeks and immediately fell in love with Finland’s nature, people, and how safe the country felt. I was also a bit tired of coaches, team managers, and clubs deciding what I did in my free time. Because of my professional career, I couldn’t plan things in my life, and I had very little free time.
I went to Bosnia for a week, packed two bags, and then returned to Finland, where I started playing for Åbo IFK in Turku. Previously, handball had been my job, and I was paid for it; now, I played just for fun. Handball’s status in Finland is different from Bosnia and Croatia. The level of play is also different, but I adapted well because I came from a professional league.
After playing for about four years, I felt lower back pain during one training session. When I went for an MRI, the doctor told me I had a lower back vertebra injury. I was told I could continue playing, but if I jumped, turned, or made sudden movements, I had to be careful. Playing in Finland had been a lot of fun, but I decided to prioritize my health and stopped playing.
When I moved to Finland, it was late summer, and I didn’t know what autumn and winter looked like in Finland. Everything was very different from my home country: the mentality, culture, and sports. But I know I would have had a completely different experience moving to Finland without handball. Handball is known as a Swedish-speaking sport in Finland, which may have brought a different mentality to the sport compared to others. People were very welcoming, warm, and friendly. I have only beautiful memories when I think back to the old times with my team and how encouraging and accepting everyone was there.
How does Finnish sports culture differ from Bosnia and Croatia?
This is a very interesting question; I have talked about this with many people. People who haven’t been to Finland may not really understand that Finnish culture is like an island. Finland is considered a Nordic country, like Sweden or Norway, but I would say the mentalities in these countries are very different. The Finnish language is very different from other languages, as are the ways of communicating. People are not as expressive when they speak compared to where I come from. It was interesting also as a coach to notice after games how closed people keep themselves in Finland.
The social structure is, of course, also very different from my home country. In Finland, everything is very organized. In Bosnia, sports is almost the only chance to succeed in life or to get out of the country. Even if you have a good education, it’s not certain that you’ll get a job in a corrupt society.
In Finland, sports is seen more as a relaxed hobby, so compared to my home country, there is less fighting spirit. I love “sisu” and everything that the term means in Finland, but sports is still very different from my home country. In Finland, you can get an education and have a parallel career, but in Bosnia, it’s a job you literally give your all to. These big differences also lead to different approaches to how people strive, push or prepare themselves in team sports.
I think I brought quite a bit of “Balkan fire” to the Finnish teams I worked in and played for. When Finnish athletes get heated, they are still calmer and more reserved than people from where I come from. In Finland, emotions are just not expressed as strongly. I’m not saying it’s wrong; it’s just different. In Finland, I had to be with some of my good friends for four or five years before they opened up and started talking. When you go to have a coffee with someone in Bosnia, they immediately tell you their whole life story.
Finland was a big step in my coaching career. I actually developed my entire coaching methodology and philosophy while in Finland. The culture was so different, and when you work in such a culture, you don’t get as much feedback as you would in Bosnia, Germany, or Spain, simply because people are more closed. Gestures and facial expressions don’t tell you how people react to the information you give to them, and when you ask something, you don’t necessarily get long answers. Do they understand the information? Has it gotten through? There was a lot for me to learn here. As a coach, I had to recreate the exercises I brought from Bosnia and Croatia, simplify them, and make them more accessible to the different levels of athletes I coached in Finland.
Coaching career
My coaching career began with goalkeeper camps I organized in Turku. Later, I have worked in over 30 countries and participated in some of the biggest competitions in handball. I have coached at the World Championships, the Asian Championships, and last summer at the Paris Olympics, which I consider the crown of my coaching path so far.
In Finland, I worked a lot with goalkeepers from different teams. I worked with them privately because they needed special and slightly higher-level goalkeeper coaching than what they received in their teams. After Åbo IFK, I worked with the Finnish Handball Federation, coaching goalkeepers first in the youth national teams and later in the women’s and men’s national teams. At the same time, I coached goalkeepers for several club teams, such as Dicken in Helsinki and Grankulla IFK in Kauniainen.
After leaving Finland, I coached, for example, the USA women’s youth national team. In April 2022, we qualified for the Youth World Championships. After that, I was asked to join the South Korean men’s national team’s coaching staff. I worked with them for almost two years. Then the South Korean Handball Federation asked me to help their women’s national team at the Olympics. In addition to these major projects, I worked with many goalkeepers in different countries and clubs at the same time.
How would you make sports fairer or better?
In my coaching career, I have visited many countries and seen various cultures and conditions. For example, in Bosnia, coaches are not even paid a salary that would allow them to get properly by in their daily lives. Sports does not receive support from the government, so the working conditions for coaches are very poor. For young athletes, much depends on their parents’ income. Some can afford to support their child’s sports hobby, some cannot.
In my experience, participating in sports is most difficult for people with immigrant backgrounds who already face significant challenges integrating into society and earning enough money to live, let alone afford the luxury of sports. Unfortunately, sports has become a luxury in many countries. If sports is not sufficiently supported, a lot of money has to be charged from the parents, which drives people away from sports. I have seen families in Finland where parents cannot even buy handball shoes for their children.
It is also common that coaching is not paid for, and coaches work as a hobby. This is a good thing in a way because many children get the opportunity to practice sports because of it, but I don’t think coaches should work for free. Clubs should be able to pay coaches, and parents shouldn’t have to pay so much. I have seen many talented young players stop playing because their parents cannot afford to transport them to training or buy equipment.
Coaches are often told that we shouldn’t show our emotions. For example, after losing some big game, it is common to think that we should forget it immediately and start focusing on the next one. Coaches, especially at the top level, have a lot of pressure; they should always perform at a high level and not show their vulnerability. I believe sports would be better if we allowed emotions also for coaches and created a system where coaches are paid for their work and where families wouldn’t have to pay so much for their children’s sports hobbies.
