The French handball players were crowned European champions for the fourth time by defeating Denmark (33-31) after extra time in the Euro final in Cologne on Sunday, ten years after their last continental title. Six months before the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Nikola Karabatic’s gang takes their revenge for the 2023 World Cup won in the final by the Danes.
“It’s magical”, relishes Ludovic Fabregas
After a decade of waiting, the Blues were no longer ten minutes away. The French therefore went through an overtime, snatched by the same score as in the semi-final against Sweden (27-27). “We win this Euro, a competition that we haven’t won for ten years,” said Ludovic Fabregas at the microphone of BeIN Sports. “It’s magical (…) We are often behind but never too far behind. We knew how to hold on, we knew how to show mentality. The team knew how to hold on, and go to overtime. (…) We assumed our responsibilities. It’s a team victory.”
There were 30 seconds remaining before the end of normal time when Ludovic Fabregas turned to score the net and take his side a little further in this poorly started final. Another of his wrist shots sent Nikola Karabatic’s tape into contact (29-29) at halftime of overtime with the possession to come.
Dika Mem, awakened by Nielsen’s exit, scored his first goals to propel the Blues to the European title. The last trophy that the generation after the Experts was missing, his and that of Nedim Remili or Ludovic Fabregas, already Olympic (2021) and world (2017) champions.
“We manage to find resources even though we are mistreated,” analyzes the coach
These Blues, who are “fed up of being second, third or even fourth” and who came across the Rhine “to win”, repeated the voracious Remili, have finally climbed the last step. Only the Olympic title having come in the last seven years and the world coronation in 2017. “It’s a crazy thing. I will remember it all my life. I feel joy, from everything. Everything that has happened for six month, breathes Samir Bellahcene on BeIN Sports, who experienced his first selection less than a year ago. It’s a reward. I hope there will be others.”
On the Danish side, their granite goalkeeper Emil Nielsen (15 saves), the impassivity of Mikkel Hansen (9 goals) on penalties and the magic of Mathias Gidsel (8/8) have long made the Blues doubt. But they have never given up, as since the start of the Euro, neither in the face of them nor in the face of the vermilion wave covering the Kölnarena, the border being less than six hours by car as we have been reminded all weekend. end the numerous “DK” number plates seen in town.
“It’s huge what just happened, it was a crazy fight, a fight of titans,” says coach Guillaume Gille. “We manage to find resources even though we are mistreated, and we find light in this extension which has been stifling.” It was just a matter of time for Nielsen to sound the death knell: the last Danish rampart pushed back the French shooters. Marmoreal wall of this Euro (40% of shots stopped), Emil Nielsen was launched from the start and favored by the Niklas Landin monument, his 272 selections and his two Olympic medals in a profitable bet from coach Nikolaj Jacobsen.
And it is undoubtedly no coincidence that the best blue intervened with the exit of the Barcelonan, who had plunged the Frenchman Dika Mem (0/5) into failure and the entry of Niklas Landin (3 saves, 25 %).