Albertsen and his once-in-a-lifetime opportunity

After two years he returned to Denmark, took over at Randers, then Viborg and later Kobenhavn, before he received another call to Germany in 2014: within three years he steered the ambitious club Bietigheim from mid-table to the top of the Bundesliga and to the EHF Cup final. At the same time, he started a new project in Switzerland and became head coach of the Swiss women’s national team and later head of the newly-built Swiss girls’ youth handball academy in 2020, at which point he left Bietigheim.

Albertsen formed a new generation and a rejuvenated national team, which made it to their first ever EHF EURO in 2022. In 2024, Switzerland is co-host of the EHF EURO – but without Albertsen on the bench as, in June 2023, Albertsen and Allan Heine (who had been his assistant coach at the Swiss national team) were appointed as new coaches of FTC Budapest. After more than 15 years, the 2023 EHF Champions League finalists went separate ways with their coach Gabor Elek. For the first time ever, Ferencvaros has appointed foreign coaches.

In this interview, Martin Albertsen – cousin of Olympic, world and European champion Katrine Fruelund- talks about his start and ambitions at Budapest and why FTC is a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” for him.

For the last few weeks, you have been living and working in Budapest – how was your start?
Martin Albertsen: Everybody knows Budapest as the host of the EHF Champions League FINAL4 and as a brilliant city to live. My family and I loved this city from the first moment and it is a huge honour to be coach of this club. FTC never had a foreign coach – and now Allan and I are the first to do so.

You were expected to steer the Swiss national team at the EHF EURO 2024 on home soil – what happened then?
Martin Albertsen: Of course, it was a big secret, when we were first contacted by FTC and I still had a valid contract with the Swiss Federation until end of 2024. Therefore, both sides had to negotiate and to agree – and finally I am more than happy to be here.

Finally, what was the reason to say yes to FTC?
Martin Albertsen: I am living in the now – and I am sure we did a great job to build this new, young Swiss team from scratch when we implemented the youth academy. Suddenly we had two extremely interesting offers: to steer the Swiss team at the EHF EURO 2024 at home or to take over a famous and highly successful and ambitious club. Both projects are great, but having the chance to join FTC was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You never know if you get a chance like this again, and my gut instinct said: do it, Martin!

What was the main task at the start?
Martin Albertsen: We have a new start for the whole club. After 16 years with Gabor Elek as the head coach and Hungarian as the main language we are internationalising the club now. English will be the number one language in training, but of course, Allan and I will try to learn Hungarian, though we know how different this language is to learn. This will take some time. We will have a mix of players and a mix of cultures, and we already recognised the opportunities this big club, including its famous football department, offers. We will try to make use of many synergies in the club.

You coached many club teams before and now a national team – was it hard to switch back to club level again?
Martin Albertsen: It is no major change switching from a national team to a club team. For me, it is an extreme happiness to be in the training hall every day with my players, this was the biggest difference, even though I was coach at the Swiss youth academy. It is essential for a coach to have this everyday life with the players to bring them ahead to improve them. I am full of energy and motivation.

Why did you continue to work with your assistant coach Allan Heine in Budapest?
Martin Albertsen: Allan and I have a huge experience in coaching clubs – he was in Viborg and Nantes, I was in Viborg and Bietigheim. We know each other very well – and it is currently the trend that coaching teams cooperate and join a club together.

Coincidentally, both FTC and their biggest domestic rivals have Danish coaches now…
Martin Albertsen: It is a coincidence that Györ and FTC are coached by Danes – and handball has a lot of coincidences. Hungarian clubs are ambitious and Hungarian clubs are attractive for foreign, mainly Scandinavian, coaches.

When you talk about ambitions – does it increase the pressure on you, as FTC made it to the 2023 Champions League final?
Martin Albertsen: I do not estimate it as additional pressure that we took over FTC right after their biggest international success. This club always had great teams and they worked so hard for decades to come that far – and of course they deserved to be in the final. It was the climax of the evolution of this club. Many teams aim for this and never make it, the concurrence in European women’s handball gets stronger year by year. This final was a mega-highlight for all players, as you never know if you go that far again in the rest of your career. Therefore making it to the final of the last season, even increased Allan’s and my will to go to Budapest. This was another drive for us.

But will you get the time to implement your ideas?
Martin Albertsen: FTC is a patient club, having this new start in mind. And I really like those projects, when you can build up something new. In Bietigheim we started almost from zero, in Switzerland I could build-up the new academy. 

What impressed you most in your new team?
Martin Albertsen: The team is well-rehearsed – and what I realised in the first weeks already, this team has a very special kind of team spirit, from which the individual players extremely profit. The mix of young and experience players, of Hungarian and foreign players makes this team so special – and all of them have a huge ambition to win something.

Will FTC’s playing style become more Scandinavian with two Danish coaches?
Martin Albertsen: The playing style will be another mix of cultures – with Hungarian and Scandinavian ingredients. At first, it is about the individual development of players. Compared to last season, we run more – and this does not automatically mean that the speed is higher. But of curse, when you run longer distances, you are able to score more counter-attack goals, and this shall be the key for our style.

Playing a successful Champions League is one goal, winning trophies in Hungary another one – how will you cope with those ambitions and how will you prevent the players from exhausting?
Martin Albertsen: When you coach a club which competes in a top league like Hungary, France, Denmark or Romania and the Champions League, it is always a balancing act in terms of burden and workload. You need to perform on the highest level twice a week, and the playing system in Hungary is even harder than in Denmark, where you can lose some matches and still have the chance to enter the play-offs and the finals. In Hungary, you must win every match otherwise you are out of the race for the trophy. Therefore, we use a lot of technology and analysis tools to always have an overview of the workload of every player. We have a huge staff around the team with experts in checking the health and workload status of the players. Looking upon the staff and the abilities we have, FTC is the most professional club I have ever coached.

Photos © FTC-Rail Cargo Hungaria