Denmark one small step away from semi-finals

Denmark one small step away from semi-finals

The favoured teams have made their way in the evening Main Round games of Match Day 1. Denmark took a close and thrilling victory against Poland, as France overran Hungary. Both teams took the lead in their group remaining unbeaten. For Denmark it was the sixth straight victory.

Group I:

After the first Match Day France and Spain (each 5:1 points) lead the ranking ahead of Iceland (4:2), Germany, Hungary (each 2:4) and Norway (0:6).

France – Hungary 37:24 (18:13)

Clear victory for the reigning champion, but it took some time before the French team had found their pace. Hungary dominated the starting period thanks to the goals of Lajos Mocsai and led 9:7, as the French defense couldn’t stop them. The key factor for the rest of the match was the change of goalkeepers in the French team: Daoude Karaboue replaced Thierry Omeyer, and this change brought more concentration and stability to the French defense. The engine of the reigning champion had started and they extended the lead easily to 18:13 at the break, as the number of Hungarian mistakes arose. In the second half France played as cold as ice, as they nearly caused no mistakes and overran the Magyars with their power and physical strength. Hungary didn’t find any means to break the defense wall and France extended the lead to 27:17 in minute 45 to 32:20 in minute 53 to the final score of 37:24 – and they didn’t have to give all they can to reach this result.

Group II:

Denmark throne ahead of the rest with 6:0 points, ahead of Sweden (4:2), Croatia (3:3), Argentina and Poland (each 2:4) and Serbia (1:5). The Danes need only one single point from the match against Argentina.

Denmark – Poland 28:27 (15:9)

What a thrilling final of a match, which seemed to be decided at the break: Denmark was the lucky winner of a high tensioned match – and remain the only team in this WCH, which has won all their current six matches. With 6:0 Main Round points the Danes are only one victory away from the semi-finals. Poland has 2:4 points on their account and will have to face Serbia and Croatia. After the 2:0 Poland didn’t hit the back of the net for nearly ten minutes – and the reason was obvious: Danish World class goalkeeper Niklas Landin, who saved 15 shots only in the first half. He closed the gate completely and gave his team chances to start their counter attack play. And despite an early Polish time-out Denmark scored a 7:0 series to 7:2. And they kept the lead as the Polish attack still was weak, Landin became stronger and the Danish wing players Hans Lindbergh and Lars Christiansen took their chances. And as Mikkel “TNT” Hansen started his hammers the distance was seven goals at the break. And it could have been even bigger if the Polish goalkeeper Slawomir Szmal wouldn’t have had a strong day. The second half was absolutely different. As the Polish attack improved the Danes had problems in scoring. Poland reduced the gap minute by minute: 11:15, 16:20 and 21:24 in minute 50. Seven minutes before the end it was only 25:23 for the Danes – and the Poles were close to turn the game completely thanks to the five goals of Mariusz Jurkiewicz after the break. But two goals of Hans Lindbergh secured the narrow victory for the Danes, attended by 11.114 spectators. Top scorers were Lindberg, Tluchynski and Jurkiewicz (Poland), with each six goals.

 

President’s Cup, group II:

Bahrain – Brazil 30:37 (15:17)

WCh debutant Bahrain will meet Australia in the match 23/24 on Sunday in Malmö, as Brazil will have a South American duel for the places 21 and 22 against Chile.  Brazil was in lead all the match, as Bahrain couldn’t continue their match play they had shown against Egypt. But they were strong enough to score the equalizer after the break to the 19:19, before Brazil pre-decisively extended the lead to 27:22. At least the game was decided at the score of 33:26 in minute 55.

The fixtures of the placement matches:

13/14: Egypt – Korea

15/16 Algeria – Japan

17/18: Slovakia – Austria

19/20: Romania – Tunisia

21/22: Brazil – Chile

23/24: Australia - Bahrain

 

Photos by Sascha Klahn

Comment using Facebook Connect

Comments

Good point for France. But still the begining from now to the Olympic Final. Just a warm up.
Poland is the best!
1.Perhaps will repeat the situation from Women European championship 2010 in the semifinals .There were Romania and three Nordic countries qualified, 2 of them due to the value and competence:Norway and Sweden, but and other qualified by cheating and lack of fair- play:denmark.And it's not just me saying that as Romanian, told that specialists and journalists from all over Europe, fans of handball and handball players. 2. Begin to repeat the situation of the Women European championship 2010.I mean some of the referees begin to do "work. " And that see all handball fans.Denmark, THE NEW CHEATERS at men's handball as well as women handball.Not to mention the attitude of many Danish fans.We will never forget rude attitude and lack of education, this evening with POLAND as well as at European Championship host by denmark, when this ugly won "helped" with ROMANIA in the group, but LOST with ROMANIA the match to the bronze medal.Go POLAND, go ICELAND PS.I saw the match Poland-denmark at tv. PS.congratulations to NORWAY, which was also the host of European competition in 2010, but they behaved with dignity,fair-play and have also won DESERVES , BY VALUE, the Women's European Championship.
Romanian Warrior - you are still a blabling clown - get a life - not everybody cheats - just because you cant win. Lets face it Nordic countries are much better than the Balkans - only real competion for them will come from France and Spain.
Dear Romanian Warrior When you try to make an argument it's a good idea to actually have your arguments ready and having some source material to back them up. I happened to follow the European championships here in December and the world cup taking place right now and I can't really tell where you're getting this "Denmark cheats" thing from. I can only imagine it being the case if the refferees were on their sides, but that just means it's horrible refferees and not neccesarily cheating players. And I don't think you should be talking about attitude and respect. You act like a butt hurt 12 year old who's pissed at it's parents for not buying it candy. And don't get me wrong, I can see where you're coming from. I mean, if I Denmark was to be knocked out in the preliminary round I'd be pretty pissed too, but I woundn't go on the internet and make irrational arguments and hate the team that just happened to knock us out. So dude, don't be butt hurt just because Romania didn't make it through. Really you're just making yourself look silly for taking this thing too seriously. Regards.
I am a Dane - do you mean you would be pissed (intoxicated) or pissed off? Btw I see no cheating. Denmark is the best team fair and square.
You mean the East German referees are back? I played in the Romanian first league when Romania was the world champion and our coach kept telling us that we must play in such a way that referee-ing cannot hurt us. Sometimes you just have to score twicw to make a goal count just to compenasate for "mistakes" by referees ... and believe me if you played against Steaua or Dinamo, there were "occasional mistakes" The other thing our coach was telling us is to stop whining and to get back in there and work our butt off ...
forgot to say: the best goalie I ever saw: Mortensen
I live in Australia, migrated here in 1973, from Denmark, but I still enjoy the Handball, not that I see much of i here. My question really bis, is there anywhere I can watch the WC Tournament via the Internet.
sputnik.dk
Blind Czech referees spoiled polish victory!!! After Marcin Lijewski shot the ball was INSIDE the goal and the referees did not see that!!! How much did you Danes pay them??
Alex, if the Polish team couldn't come back from that single goal then they really didn't deserve to win. But don't get me wrong, that ball was definitely inside the goal. But I'm Danish and I'm rooting for Denmark and as long as they win I don't really care.
It came as no real surprise for me that Denmark beat Poland, heard that they missed a couple of players and their big sharpshooter has one eye damaged and was out most of the time, so i kinda expected it, but we have allso two good guys out in Thomas Mogensen and Kasper Søndergård, Søndergård only momentarily, but great effort on covering Mikkel Hansen thou from Poland. And i´m not so sure that France will have an easy time beating us, the danish team are playing very well and they can score many goals from any positions and have very good return runs when nailing the ball from the opponents. Final prediction: Denmark vs France. And the match will be very equal!
So sad... Poland lost 2 points :( But i like Denmark's team - players are really nice. I hope that they will win Championship (if not Poland of course hehe).
Poland lost because they played a horrible 1st half. There were some weard decisions by the Czech referees, but if Polish side played whole game and not only 30 minutes then the score would be much different. Also, I have a one question regarding Danish fans. Why were you so disrespectful to the Polish anthem? Did we do something bad to you or what?
I must agree with "stinson", Poland lost because Denmark played a very good first half and sucked in second half, and Poland the other way around. Niklas Landin in the Danish goal made the difference. I agree, that one ball was obviously in, but in 60 minutes that does not decide the match. The referees had some odd decisions, but in both ends... Poland is a great team, no doubt about that, and in the future they will be even better with all the young players. Denmark really missed a couple of great players like Nøddesbo, Mogensen etc., but they played a great first half anyway. I must say, there is an amazing atmosphere in Malmö Arena, thanks to A LOT of Danish fans, but I don't know, why they were so disrespectful yesterday. There should of course be complete silence and respect during BOTH national Anthems! Yesterday that wasn't the case, but I sincerely hope and believe that it will not repeat itself. But other than that, the Danish spectators are a highlight of the tournament. The Swedish spectators were awfully quiet during the match against Serbia, and it has been quite disappointing. It is even regarded as possible, that the Swedish players on tuesday (in the match against Denmark) will "play away".
Congratulations to Brazil for their first victory of the tournament :)
Yes you can watch all the matches over internet. http://www.livehandball.tv/page/Home But it costs. Fairly good quality, plus they store the main-round matches, which you can watch afterwards, but of course they show all matches live.
Dear all, I come from Macedonia, I am a handball coach, and an admirer sport in general. Following this argument I can only add one thing: One can never be objective enough when it comes to the judgement of his own qualities. So my dear Polish and Romanian friends, I am really sorry to tell you but unfortunately for you, the biggest blame for the lost matches in this case is in your teams. As far as Romania is concerned even after the draw was made, it was clear that your team will fight the Serbians to go through to the second round (anything better for you would've been considered a surprise), and it's none else's fault that you lost to Algeria. As for Poland, you need to take a good look at the first half of the match against Denmark, and you will see that there was only one team playing there. So beating a team like Denmark with only one half played good is simply not enough. However, regarding the support that the Scandinavians and the western European teams are enjoying at the EHF and the IHF is more then a fact. My Danish and Swedish friends, it is a fact that the Dans were having one of the best female squads known to handball history in the '90's. The same thing goes to the Swedish Men's team in the same period. However, the fact is that whenever you have a good generation (not extraordinary, just good), playing important matches in Scandinavia, it is clear that you do have a wind in your back by the officials. This thing goes for Scandinavians and Western European teams (above all Germany, France before this generation, Spain, Austria (women's) etc). I mean don't you find it odd, that it's only these countries blamed to have administrative support and not others? Give me one single example when a Polish, Russian, Croatian, Slovenian, Serbian, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Czech etc team in any competition was having such support in any case against any of the teams coming from "your" part of Europe, whilst vice-reversa examples can be found in every big competition. Now since the facts can not be discussed, I will not initiate such thing on this matter, I will just give my opinion about this reality. The reason is very simple - crisp clean MONEY. Germany, Spain, France, Denmark, Sweden, Norway are the teams that do take biggest part in all the competitions (cups and international, men and women) and with it comes the biggest share from the financial point of view. Which means, teams like, Tatran Preshov, Steaua, CO Zagreb, Pivovarna, Cehovskie Medvedi, Dinamo Astrakhan, Podravka, Krim, Partizan, Crvenza Zvezda, Pelister, Metalurg, Vardar are not interesting (for EHF and IHF) since the TV channels are not interested to pay large sums to broadcasti their matches as much as the ones "from the other part of the line". Which means a lot more money going to the EHF and IHF funds from your countries. It is a great business deal, but in reality an undoubted conflict of interests. I don't need to explain it is a serious felony, as I believe in our common sense. I don't deny that your countries are doing much better from economical point of view and I most sincerely respect and admire that. But let's separate economy from sport, and of course let's not understand the sport as a business, because above all the primer purpose of it is entertainment, health maintenance and improvement. In this case the EHF and IHF are not putting all of us in the same position to compete, which conflicts the primer principles of the sport - fair competition, furthermore reliability and of course the value of the successes by the countries that win in this case. So as you can see, it doesn't mean that Scandinavians are great just because they are Scandinavians, and it doesn't mean that Balkans are good just because we are Balkans, French because they are French etc. Get real, everyone has the right to be proud of his own fatherland, the phenomenon is called PATRIOTISM. The point is: In handball there are still BIG and small teams, since the quality in it is not equally spread worldwide, and EHF and IHF are not doing anything to change that. Take a loot at the football. 20 years ago nobody could even imagine that non Latin-america or European team could play an important role in international stage. And take a look now - 1996, 2000 Olympic champions and 2010 world junior champions are all African teams which changes significantly the world football map. Yet this is not a case in the handball despite the real quality coming not just from the Balkans. Do not forget the north African countries some years back, Cuba as well South Korea. Let's not forget there's something more then money in life...well in the handball in this case.
Poland is the best team ever. I'm German but I love Polish players: Jurasik Tkaczyk und Shmall
@Locco Niko, I agree with you on most of you supported.Dear Sir, unfortunately you're right.Good night.
Congratulations on 19th place Romanian Warrior - I guess you guys just taught the rest of the world to well.
@andersen, alupigus.
Man in Oz: you can watch the handball world cup on livehandball.tv. I do that. Free highlights, but pay for full matches.