“I have never been world champion, so I really want to become one”, declared Laura Glauser bluntly, after the semi-final won easily (37-28) on Friday by the French handball players against Sweden. This little sentence – released after another high-flying performance which earned her the title of best player of the match – says a lot about the state of mind of the goalkeeper of the France team, at the time of the match. face Norway in the final, Sunday December 17 at 7 p.m. in Herning, Denmark.
The Franc-Comtoise does not have a record as long as the night of the winter solstice in Scandinavia of the other executives of the selection, like the leader Grace Zaadi or the captain Estelle Nze Minko who have won all possible titles. At 30 years old, Laura Glauser is nevertheless one of the oldest in the group (115 selections since 2012). But she has only won one title at international level: Euro 2018, played at home. Silver medalist at the Rio Games in 2016, she was injured when France won gold in Tokyo in the summer of 2021.
To win a new world title, the third in their history after those of 2003 and 2017, the Blues will need new exploits from their best goalkeeper, in the absence of Cléopâtre Darleux, usual holder in the French cages, who is struggling to recovering from a concussion since February.
The goalkeeper position is definitely not easy in handball. Laura Glauser has also come a long way. A year ago, she missed Euro 2022 due to a stress fracture in a vertebra and an injury to her right elbow. At the time, nothing was going well in her life, as she told several media outlets. Depression, separation from the father of his daughter Kaniela, aged 5.
In 2020, the transition from her cocoon in Metz, where she stayed for ten years, to Györ, a Hungarian club renowned for being the most successful in Europe and the most demanding on the planet, was all the more complicated as she suffered from a cruciate ligament rupture in 2019, and therefore arrived short of form in Hungary. A long way of the cross followed, from which she ended up freeing herself by confiding her discomfort to a coach. “I’m better, I’m coming back to life after two difficult yearsshe explains. I am rebuilding myself little by little. I hope to feel good in my sneakers from now on. » Since 2022, she has worn the colors of Bucharest at club level, another key stage in its reconstruction.
Decisive against Norway and the Czech Republic
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