Three dangerous World Cup opponents
This is Germany’s way back into the world elite
By Till Erdenberger, Poznan
01/19/2023 2:19 p.m
For the first time since 2017, the German national handball team is going into the main round of a major tournament with the maximum number of points. The conditions for reaching the knockout stages are magnificent.
In the camp of the German national handball team, the mood is great after the preliminary round: With victories against Qatar (31:27), Serbia (34:33) and Algeria (36:21), Alfred Gislason’s team has a “broad chest” (Left wing Rune Dahmke) earned, the national coach himself is “extremely proud”. With the maximum yield of four points, the team takes a small cushion into the main round, in which they start as favorites against Argentina in the evening. Depending on the constellation, a win there could be enough to reach the knockout games in a major tournament for the first time since the 2019 home World Cup. With Argentina, the Netherlands and Norway, three completely different tasks await the world champion of 2007. “The tasks are not getting any easier,” said captain Johannes Golla and Gislason demanded that “every game should be upped the ante. If we can do that, a lot can happen.” A group check:
The “homework”: Argentina (8.30 p.m./ ARD and in the live ticker on ntv.de): There is no doubt: Argentina are the easiest opponents on the way to something countable. The South Americans clearly won the “group final” against North Macedonia, but lost significantly to Norway (21:31) and the Netherlands (19:29). “We will take them seriously, because of course we want to win the game,” said the national coach and also provided a brief analysis of the opponent: “They are a very passionate team who are very agile. The players are very quick on their feet.” With goalkeeper Lionel Maciel, who played for FC Barcelona last season, and director Diego Simonet (Montpellier), two Argentinians have already won the Champions League. “They’re a savvy team,” warned Germany keeper Andreas Wolff, “we have a lot of work to do.” Circle runner Jannik Kohlbacher, Germany’s top scorer with ten goals in the last preliminary round game against Algeria, made the importance of the opening game of the second leg clear: “If we don’t pass that, it will be very, very difficult to progress.”
The former outsider: Netherlands (Saturday, 8.30 p.m. / ZDF and in the live ticker on ntv.de): They had the big favorite Norway with all the world-class players on the edge of the abyss in the last preliminary round game: Only when the northern Europeans had a foot in the air with a five-goal deficit at the beginning of the second half did superstar Sander Sagosen and Co ., in the end the Netherlands still lost 26:27. Germany’s backcourt player Kai Häfner attested a “sensational development” for the team, which had played its way into the main round with two clear victories against North Macedonia and Argentina. The Netherlands fully justifies the trust that the IHF had placed in them: The World Federation enabled Bonds coach Staffan Olsson’s team to participate in the World Cup for the first time since 1961 (!) with a wild card. In qualifying, the Netherlands failed after a surprising away win and a clear home defeat against Portugal.
With the only 1.73 meter tall Luc Steins (Paris Saint-Germain) they have a playmaker with tremendous speed, Magdeburg’s Kay Smits contributed 24 goals from the backcourt to progress. Smits and Steins also shook up the German team for at least half of the 2020 European Championship: The DHB team was only able to organize a clear victory (35:23) late at the time, Smits scored seven times, Steins, who was named player of the game at the time , scored six times. With right winger Bobby Schagen (TBV Lemgo) and backcourt player Dani Baijens (HSV Hamburg), other Bundesliga professionals are among the pillars in Oranje.
The penetrating power is right up front, but there is also a lot of quality in and around their own circle: With a catch rate of 41 percent saved balls, Bart Ravensbergen, who plays for HSG Nordhorn-Lingen in the 2nd Bundesliga, is one of the outstanding goalkeepers in the preliminary round. For comparison: world handball player Niklas Landin saved 38 percent of the balls that rushed at his goal, the convincing German keeper Andreas Wolff only 32 percent. Due to the ultimately missed coup against Norway, the previous surprise team started the second group phase with “only” two points.
The favorite: Norway (Monday, 8.30 p.m./ ARD and live ticker at ntv.de): There is no doubt that at the end of the main round, Norway is “the strongest opponent”, as right winger Patrick Groetzki told ntv.de after the convincing Algeria game. The team around the star player Sagosen is one of the favorites in this tournament, they survived the preliminary round unscathed after a final effort against the Netherlands: Like the German team, Norway also took four points with them on the way to the knockout round. Before the arduous victory, which was so important for one’s own perspective, there had been a lot of applause: the 39:27 win over Macedonia at the start was followed by a 32:21 win against Argentina on the second matchday. Sagosen, who is currently playing his third and final year for THW Kiel in the Bundesliga, is leading the way with plenty of goals, with Flensburg’s Magnus Röd in particular keeping up. The Scandinavians are world class in every part of the team.
In recent years, Norway has risen to become the mighty feared opponent of the German team: At the home World Cup 2019 (shared with Denmark) in Hamburg in the semi-finals, dreams of a final were mercilessly shattered (25:31). What nobody could have guessed back then, in the semifinals in Hamburg, when a courageous DHB selection had inspired the country: It was the last knockout game of a German men’s national team in a major tournament: It doesn’t matter whether the European Championships in 2020 and 2022, the World Cup 2021 or the Olympics: You never got past the main round. Last year, Golla and Co., severely shaken by corona attacks, went down in the main round at 23:28 with their heads held high, but ultimately had no chance against Norway.
Even if the Scandinavians were vulnerable for the first time in the preliminary round, they remain the favourites. The results in past tournaments are too constant (third place in the 2020 European Championships, sixth place in the 2021 World Cup, fifth place in the 2022 European Championships), and the formative players around Sagosen and Röd are too dominant and reliable. The good news: with two victories over Argentina and the Netherlands, Gislason’s ensemble would have secured their target quarter-finals before the group finals. But there is no fear in the German camp anyway, of anyone: “We can see that things are working,” Golla said recently. “If we manage to keep our performance constant for 60 minutes, it can be a good tournament. Then we can keep up with any opponent.” A good tournament, that would be this world championship from the quarterfinals.