French handball players knew it: it is difficult to stop Vikings in search of gold. After a fierce battle, Guillaume Gille’s men lost (34-29) in Stockholm, Sunday January 29, against a brilliant team from Denmark in the World Cup final. The Scandinavians, who led the race from start to finish, offered an unprecedented hat-trick against the team that had beaten them in the final of the Olympic Games in Tokyo, eighteen months ago. In the match for third place, Spain dominated Sweden (36-39).
In the Tele2 Arena in Stockholm, where Danish supporters had come in large numbers, the France team had the merit of not resigning themselves after a catastrophic start to the match. Hit in the foot, Nikola Karabatic, who was playing his last World Cup at 38, had to resolve to leave his partners after a quarter of an hour. After being led by five goals, the Habs managed to pick up the score (16-16) after returning from the locker room.
Like Ludovic Fabregas, excluded twice, the French defense, imperial for two weeks, suffered in the face of the Danish fury. Backs Simon Pytlick (9 goals), Mathias Gidsel (6 goals) and Rasmus Lauge (10 goals) delivered a recital. The latter, who had hardly played in the tournament, hit the nail on the head in the last quarter of an hour. By comparison, the French attacking game relied too much on the flashes of Nedim Remili and Dika Mem.
The bankruptcy of the French goalkeepers did the rest. With Kevin Moller and, above all, Niklas Landin, the reigning double best player in the world, Denmark certainly have the best pair of goalkeepers on the planet. Too often let down by their defence, neither Vincent Gérard (4 saves from 25 Danish shots) nor Rémi Desbonnet (3 out of 16) have managed to compete with the Scandinavian goalkeepers.
The defeat has a bitter taste for the Blues, who were aiming for the title. “To stop like that, one step from the finish, it’s hard! »commented Vincent Gérard. “We ran behind in the score and we did not manage to reverse the balance of power, but I am proud of the state of mind of the boys”, reacted Guillaume Gille. “I’m sure this group will bounce back. There are very good young players, people who are hungry. There will be other finals”added Luka Karabatic, the captain of the Blues.
A rough team
Despite this defeat, the Blues have nothing to be ashamed of their career. Undefeated in the group stage, they successively beat Poland in Katowice (26-28), Germany in the quarter-finals (35-28), and above all took a nice revenge, in the semi-finals, on Sweden ( 26-31), in Stockholm, after two defeats at this stage of the competition against this same country at the 2021 World Cup and Euro 2022.
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