At the age of four they stole the stick from their father’s training sessions Zoran, former Asobal player, Serbian, to practice passing at his home in Bordils, a small town in Girona with 2,000 inhabitants. At six years old, when his teammates were simply learning to dribble, they already had the technique of two teenagers. At the age of nine they turned Bordils into the rival to beat in Catalonia, feared even by Granollers, the best youth team in Spain. At 13 years old he called them Barcelona, with whom they have already made their debut in the Champions League this season. And at the age of 17, the day before yesterday, they made their debut with the senior Spanish team with four goals each against the Netherlands. They are the Cikusa brothers, Peter y George, twins, the new phenomenon of handball, the future. After the brothers Burials or the Dujshebaevthey.
«They have that shine that is so hard to see. To begin with, they are two guys with character, you don’t have to ask them for intensity. And then they have a lot of quality, a lot. They are the same, but very different. Petar is a central defender, pure explosiveness, constant flashes and Djordje is a winger with more control, ambidextrous and a very good defender », he introduces them Javier Fernández ‘Jabato‘, current coach of the Spain youth team, with whom they won the World Cup in the category last summer. For a few years now, the brothers were in the senior coach’s forecasts, Jordi Ribera, but no one expected them to rise so quickly. In fact, in all of history, there is only one international more precocious, Quico López Balcellswhich debuted in 1966.
«The casualties [Álex Dujshebaev, Ian Tarrafeta o Jorge Maqueda] They have opened the doors to them and I think they can stay, but we have to be cautious. They haven’t even turned 18 years old. And they still have to develop physically. I’m 1.88 meters tall and they’re already an inch taller than me,” says Fernández, expectant, like everyone else, about what’s coming. This Saturday (2:15 p.m., Teledeporte) and this Sunday (4:45 p.m., TDP) the Cikusa brothers will also be present in the matches against Denmark and Norway and then who knows. Will they be at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games?
«If I’m honest with you, it makes me dizzy. The two have been burning stages very quickly and without any setbacks, without injuries, without scares. Making your debut at Barça and with Spain is not easy. You just have to see that the current captains, like Gonzalo Pérez de Vargas, had to go on loan, wait, work,” analyzes Toni García, his discoverer. Although Bordils is almost two hours from Barcelona and there were no places at La Masía, the coach, who was technical director of Barça’s youth teams, insisted and insisted that they sign for the Barça club as children. Every day his parents had to go down with them, watch their training and return home.
«It was an effort for everyone, but it was clear that they had a future. I didn’t discover them, they were discovered at their club, Bordils, but it’s true that I saw them soon. I went to the final of a youth tournament because my son was playing with Granollers and Bordils beat them. To Granollers, be careful. It was one thing… They bounced with both hands, they did slaloms, they dominated the step cycles, everything, everything,” García remembers about Pere and Jordi, as his friends call them. After the Entrerríos brothers or the Dujshebaev, the Cikusa, the future of Spanish handball.