How a move to Barça brought Roger Grimau to Dinamo Bucharest | Relief
Roger Grimauwho was Barça coach last season, was announced this Monday new coach of Dinamo Bucharest. Thus, the Catalan coach now faces his first experience abroad… although the reality is that you will find that you have a lot of “culée accent” in a Romanian club. And one of the reasons why Grimau’s name was put on the table, besides the respect that the Spanish coach enjoys abroad, is that it is in his structure that there are more Catalan and even mythical figures from Barça. . even if it’s from someone else manual sport: He handball.
He Bucharest Dynamo – a club that, in addition to the basketball section, where Grimau will now oversee a team that is in fifth position in the Romanian League with three wins and four losses, and also plays in the FIBA European Northern Basketball League.where there has not yet been a single victory, there is a handball section. AND One of the links there – in the offices – is the legend of this sport in Spain: David Barrufet.
The one who was Barça’s handball goalkeeper, whose number 16 is already retired and has been displayed at the top of Palau since 2011, He left the culé club in 2021 after six years as section manager.. A departure that occurred along with the departure of coach Javi Pascual (also from Barcelona). – not Javi Pascual in basketball, but his namesake on the bench in handball, where both are legends: the coach won the Champions League three times with Barça, and the former goalkeeper won seven during his playing days. All this before the departure of the two in 2021, after there was a “change of management that decided that changes had to be made”, according to what he said a few months ago in an interview with Relevo. AND Six months later, he went to Romania, receiving an offer from Dinamo Bucharest to become their sporting director.. Next to whom? Well, with my friend Javi Pascual.
The reality is that The duo have achieved great success for the club in just three years. For example, the team’s qualification for the Final Four of the EHF European League (the second continental competition), although it was split this summer. Pascual received an offer from Veszprém and headed to Hungary, but who replaced him? Another Catalan coach and former Spanish player: David Davis, who now still heads the bench.
And where does Grimau fit into all this? Well, more precisely, he coincided with Barrufet both when they were both players and later, while working at the club (one in the office and the other on the bench, coach of Barça B). And it can be said that Roger Grimau and Barrufet were, in a certain sense, contemporaries at Barça, where they coincided between 2003 and 2011, both as players and later as employees of the Culet club.
As happened with the Barrufet-Pascual duo, and now with the former and Davis duo, The club also wants to grow in its basketball section, as Grimau himself confirmed: after his signing became official, the program That Costa from Catalonia Radio. “This proposal convinced me. I had other offers, but this one convinced me. It’s not the Euroleague, it’s not the Eurocup, it’s not the top leagues, but I’m very excited.. This is a medium-term project aimed at developing the club. I’m very excited to go there. They trust me, and all this attracts me,” the coach admitted.