EHF Euro 2018 - Croatia

[mikh]

Going to kick off this topic with a question: anyone knows why Aidenas Malasinskas, the CB of Zaporozhe wasn't called for Lithuania's match against France last night? He's one of the most exciting CB's in the game and not having him for a match against France seems a bit odd.

[max]

Dont know about "the above"
But Sunday DK play Latvia in Latvia and Latvia will play with a b-squad.
They say that they dont a chance anyway (probably true) so their best players use "NT-week and qual-matches" to rest before next club matches...

So as some of the Danish NT players say: qualification tournaments was also made so second best teams could actually match up against the best teams from time to time. So now the quali tournament is useless and the best players who already play the most matches in League/CL play even more, just for nothing...

Ps. Mikkel Hansen are now allowed to rest and go back to Paris. Apart from that DK play Latvia with a-squad.

[SilentOne]

Wow I was not aware that the world class team of Latvia has an 'A' team and a 'B' squad so they can choose which players to rest and when... this is pathetic excuse I agree however I dont think the qualifications are useless, you can see that Finalnd beat once powerful Austria, Slovakia got a point from Russia and Poland was raped yesterday at home. There are a lot of exciting matches out there and I think male handball is developing well unlike their female counterparts..

[mikh]

^ Completely agree. Add to that Romania's win in Belarus (a little surprise I would say) and Iceland's +1 win at home against the Czech Rep.
Latvia had a really good WCh play-off against Belarus in June and missed the WCh in France on away goal rules.

On the other hand, I understand the frustration in the Danish camp. Still, they can use the occasion to do some experimenting of their own.

[SilentOne]

Romania looks much better with the new coach but the real test will be the match against Poland. I really hope they can surprise again and beat the old boring team of Poland.

[mikh]

^ Poland's weak point lately has been Dujshebajev. When he starts getting pissed on the bench, everyone on court freezes. When he "gives up" and calms down, the team is on fire.

[mikh]

Maaaany surprises in round 2, so I guess the Qualification Round is not so useless anyway.

Ukraine - Iceland 27:25. Granted, this is a difficult court for every team, but it is so strange to see Iceland struggling with Ukraine and Czech R.

Switzerland - Germany 22:23. Germany winning in the last couple of minutes in front of a packed arena and an exciting Swiss team.

Slovakia - Sweden 17:21. Expected result, but Sweden scored only 6 goals in the second half! Slovakia came from -8 and had an attack to come at -2.

Netherlands - Hungary 27:28. But the Dutch constantly led +6 in second half until Fazekas switched to "killer" mode in the last 20 mins.

Belgium - France 37:38!!! Perhaps the most exciting match of the day. The Belgians looked like a pro team and attacked without a goalkeeper throughout the whole match. They played tactically perfect and can feel unlucky not to come out with at least 1p from what surely was one of France's worse displays. Man of the match was CB Arber Qerimi from Tongeren, a player who will probably soon get the opportunity to move to France. Unfortunately he got an undeserved straight blue card 10 mins from time and I'm afraid this was the decisive detail of the match. Anyway, bravo for the Belgians and I hope they keep up the good work. They have a very young team which can definitely progress under French-Senegalese coach Yerime Silla.

Portugal - Slovenia 26: 26! Little surprise after Slovenia survived a scare at home against Switzerland in the first round.

Lithuania - Norway 32:29! After Lithuania was thrashed a few days ago at Pau by France and Norway easily won against Belgium. This definitely is a surprise giving Lithuania a good chance to fight for the third spot at least.

Serbia - Belarus 27:36! What about this? Belarus coming after a surprise defeat at home to Romania and beating Serbia who were on a high horse after winning away in Poland.

Romania - Poland 28:23. Tremendous attitude by Romania, who looks like a different team under the command of Xavi Pascual. Great defence, great moral and never giving up. We knew these guys have the potential and it was so frustrating to see them constantly fail in qualifications. The road to Euro is still long, but 2 wins from 2 matches in this very balanced group is definitely the right way to start it.

Montenegro - Russia 24:24. Second draw for the Russians in as many rounds. They're undefeated, but already trailing 2p behind Sweden before the direct double header.

[max]

Yes some excitement is definitely here.
And to be fair towards "my quote from the Danish players" : they asked for play-off matches home and away instead of all the group matches.
And yes play-off is sometimes not the most fair way. (lucky/unlucky draw and so)

[mikh]

@max: No no, don't get me wrong, I wasn't trying to be mean to you or any such thing. There were times when I was also reflecting at the value of these qualification matches, but I am really glad both of us were proven wrong.

These matches are so important for 2nd tier teams and for their development. And this weekend just comes to prove it.
There are changes to be made. For instance I wouldn't schedule a double header in 4 days between teams coming from pots 1-2 and 3-4:
- these matches resemble too much like playoffs
- they come at a time when in most campaigns two teams are already at 4p and the other two are with 0p
- they could be mixed with other matches to bring some real excitement to the groups.
Or the qualification schedule which sees 2 matches now followed by a loooong break until May, followed by 4 matches in the space of 1 month.

I'm curious how the qualification round will look like in the case of Euro 2020, when 24 teams will end up qualifying for the finals. And speaking of this, Kosovo - Turkey finished 24:24 in what is the first point for Kosovo in the qualifications for a major tournament against a team which has a decent about of players taking part in the Champions League.

[max]

Aaarh, don't think I have caught you be mean to someone mikh
Just felt I had to specify what the players talked about. So you don't get the impression that they are arrogant or something.

[mikh]

Ah, no, didn't think of that either. Hell, they came to the NT and played in what was a really easy match despite the crowded schedule. This says a lot about them. I also understand their problem with the overcrowded season, especially for the guys playing Bundesliga + ChL.
In fact, in absence of any financial analysis, I am tempted to say that this new ChL format is utterly useless. What's the purpose of playing 14 matches when almost everybody is going to qualify anyway?

[max]

Yes totally agree this CL format is a joke (wrote that in an earlier post, but withdraw it so people wouldn't be offended)
I don't watch CL before the last knock out rounds up to F4.
Oh yes PSG vs Barcelona in group stage is "match of giants" but they just exchange points so what. And group A compared to the other groups what's the point?.....

[Bo$ko]

Today is the last day of qualifications. Group 4 is still wide open.
Teams that are qualified :
DEN, HUN, BLR, SRB, ESP, AUT, CZE*, GER, SLO, SWE, MNE, FRA, NOR

The best 3rd ranked team will be from Group 4 too. So we can expect a big fight MKD-CZE, ISL-UKR.
* Czech Rep. is qualified, at least as best 3rd ranked team.

[Bo$ko]

Congrats for Macedonia, Czech Rep. and best third ranked team Iceland.

The draw for groups will be on 23th of June.

Pots should be like this :
1 - Germany, Spain, Croatia, France
2 - Denmark, Belarus, Sweden, Macedonia
3 - Norway, Montenegro, Serbia, Hungary
4 - Slovenia, Czech Republic, Austria, Iceland

[Bo$ko]

[omak]

Praying for Balkan domination in group C!

[vlad_impaler]

EHF nominate 14 referees pairs for EHF EURO 2018

12 pairs will be selected to referee the matches at the Men’s EHF EURO 2018 in Croatia from 12 to 28 January.

Andrei Gousko and Siarhei Repkin (Belarus)
Matija Gubica and Boris Milosevic (Croatia)
Vaclav Horacek and Jiri Novotny (Czech Republic)
Martin Gjeding and Mads Hansen (Denmark)
Oscar Raluy and Angel Sabroso (Spain)
Stevann Pichon and Laurent Reveret (France)
Lars Geipel and Marcus Helbig (Germany)
Zigmars Sondors and Renars Licis (Latvia)
Vaidas Mazeika and Mindaugas Gatelis (Lithuania)
Gjorgji Nachevski and Slave Nikolov (Macedonia)
Duarte Santos and Ricardo Fonseca (Portugal)
Sorin-Laurentiu Dinu and Constantin Din (Romania)
Evgeny Zotin and Nikolay Volodkov (Russia)
Arthur Brunner and Morad Salah (Sweitzerland)

http://www.handball-planet.com/ehf-nomi ... euro-2018/

[fmj]

Why is the interest in male handball som low compared to the women on this forum? Any thoughts?

[Kiddo]

I think the entire forum started in regards to female handball back in the days...

[mikh]

All that talk about the Slovenia - Germany finale yesterday, but how about the Czech game? Second big win in 1 month for Czech handball after winning against Romania at the women's WCh

[mikh]

First batch of decisive matches tonight.

Serbia - Iceland is definitely the match to watch, with Serbia still in with a little chance. They have to win +4 to put Iceland away. Problem is Serbia lost 7 out of their last 9 matches, and conceded at least 30 goals in all but one of these. Iceland on the other hand looked really good against Sweden and pretty decent against a very tough Croatian side. So Serbia has a mountain to climb tonight.

In the other group, Norway - Austria could be a narrow affair, since it's Austria's last chance to go through and they could well do so if they win +2. Still, Norway played such good handball against France and for most of the match against Belarus, it's hard to believe they will do something stupid against Austria.

[matt_]

Yesterday's Czech victory was a big upset. I think Denmark underestimated them a bit. Not all quality players played the whole game, they weren't using 100% of speed, will of winning. Danes thought it's going to be easy one. Anyway, good it happened now. In 2013-14, Denmark won all the games prior to final, but lost decisive + experienced nasty surprise in Round of 16 last year. Good omen

I agree. Serbia - Iceland will be most "matter" match tonight, but I doubt Plavi will manage to do something here. They lost to Croatia quite clearly and from what I've read (because I didn't see game against Sweden) result was better than their display.

[Rammy]

Geir Sveinsson is a disaster as a coach.
All he had to do to qualify was to lock Karason in the bathroom at half-time!

[matt_]

Wow, Serbia was only 1 goal away from going further already. Sweden should fight now for victory (or at least draw), because if Iceland will go home, they'll have 3/4 points in second group stage (instead of 0).

[Synchrony]

Serbia goes to the next phase with Sweden's win over Croatia.