Popovic recalls her experiences in a book called ”Indspark Udefra” written by Svend Bertil Frandsen and Jesper Harborg where numerous international sports profiles who have all made a name for themselves in Denmark are given a chance to tell about their experiences with Danish sports mentality.
Popovic initially reveals how the war in the former Yugoslavia failed to affect her handball career but instead turned her into a survivor:
“I began playing handball when I was ten, and since then handball has been everything to me. Of course a lot of things happened when the war began. A bomb exploded 50 metres from my home but we stayed in the arena and practised even though bombs were dropping close to us. So we survived, and because of it, we grew stronger. We are a nation where people say: ”Ok, there´s a war, we have to live with it, there´s a financial crisis, but we have to live with it. No matter what problems arise, we find a way to live with them; this is the way we are in Montenegro. We don´t give up”, says Popovic in the book.
Complete culture shock
For Bojana it was a complete culture shock to move to Denmark, where affluence and social security go hand in hand to guarantee a comfortable living for the general public on the back of her experiences in war-torn Yugoslavia. But for the Montenegrin handball legend, it was also a major surprise to see how the existence of a well-structured social safety net certainly didn´t contribute to making the Danish women better handballers.
"The Danes grow up in a country where everything is provided for them because there are no financial problems for them. So if they fail as a handballer, then they can just get a job. This is completely the opposite of Montenegro."
"If you get the chance to have a career in sports in Montenegro, you´ll fight until you bleed to pursue it. The Danes don´t have that attitude, but you cannot blame them because they live under completely different conditions than what I was used to”, says Popovic and provides an example from the initial stages of her career in Slagelse.
”I was completely in shock after a match where we had lost, and five minutes after we came back to the bus, my team-mates were sitting in the bus smiling and happy. This happened four or five times, and then I said to them: Stop, you cannot party after a defeat. Then you have to discuss what you did wrong. You cannot just dismiss it. In Budocnost, if we have lost a match, nobody talks in the bus”, says Popovic in ”Indspark Udefra”.
'Danes taught me not to be my worst own enemy.'
But while Popovic did her utmost to teach the Danes a thing or two about how to tackle defeats, Popovic was also inspired by the Danes to develop a whole new, different approach towards handball, which she has used ever since in her handball career.
”I have learned so many things in Denmark that I can use today. In Montenegro, we often see handball as hard work. The Danes see it as play due to the culture they have grown up in. They have a very relaxed attitude towards handball, and this is both good and bad."
"Of course, you should not be too relaxed, but if Danish players fail to score going face-to-face with the goalkeeper, their whole world doesn´t collapse. They just go on and don´t think about it too much. In Montenegro, we would often become very stressed in those situations and constantly look at the scoreboard."
"In that way, we sometimes become our own worst enemy”, says Popovic, who underlines that she has done her utmost to get players in Montenegro to understand the Danish philosophy.
Formidable partnership
Bojana Popovic formed a formidable partnership with the coach of Slagelse, Danish handball legend Anja Andersen, during her time in Denmark. Popovic admits that Anja Andersen made her change her perspective on handball.
”One thing that the Danes don´t like is extremely hard discipline. They don´t like it when somebody shouts at them. Instead, Anja operated with a system she called ”freedom under responsibility”.
"It basically means that the team shouldn´t function as robots, but everyone should look out for how everyone in the team can contribute to make themselves better. At the same time, you should seek to control yourself during a game." So if you are behind, you can try to have fun while you are doing everything you can to regain what you have lost. This is something I now try to pass on to players”, says Popovic.
The charismatic sports director claims that more than anything, her stay in Denmark taught her how to “think handball”: When you play, there are a lot of players who don´t think about what they are doing. It's just: “If you do this, then I do that. Anja taught me how to become my own coach when I was playing.
“Now we should do this and this, now our defense is playing poorly, now I can outjump that girl because she is small, now I can make a great pass between those players because they give me too much room, now I can make a dummy and score because she is covering her position very poorly.” This is how you become your own coach on the floor, and that is how you can begin to control matches because you are thinking handball. And all that is what I have tried to teach players afterwards”, says Popovic as she looks back on her active career in Denmark with great pleasure.