Rotterdam (dpa) – Germany’s handball women went off the floor with their heads held high after the bitter 29:30 (17:15) in the European Championship qualifier against the Netherlands.
The team of national coach Henk Groener did not manage to get the revenge they had hoped for in the second edition of the prestige duel with the 2019 world champion on Saturday for the 26:31 in the first leg. But the performance in front of 1500 spectators in Rotterdam made everyone involved confident.
“We improved and showed a good performance over 60 minutes. That’s why we deserved more,” said Groener and only quarreled with the result. “Nevertheless, great praise to the team. It’s a shame that it ended up like that.” And captain Alina Grijseels, who was the best German thrower with seven goals, emphasized: “It’s bitter to lose by one goal. But we can take a lot of positive things with us, both in defense and in attack.”
With 5:5 points, the DHB selection in Group 3 is second in the table behind the Netherlands (10:0). With a win in Greece (4:4) on April 20, the German team can secure a ticket for the finals from November 4 to 20 in Slovenia, Montenegro and North Macedonia on their own.
As in Krefeld two days earlier, the German team got off to a good start. The defense was compact, and the attack was also smooth at first. The reward was a quick three-goal lead (6:3/9th minute), which lasted for a long time.
Lost the lead due to a few mistakes
The hosts only got closer towards the end of the first half and used some mistakes made by the German team after the restart to equalize 18:18. The DHB selection, in which goalkeeper Isabell Roch did a good job between the posts and in which, in addition to Grijseels, circle runner Luisa Schulze and right winger Maike Schirmer (4 goals each) were particularly convincing in attack, were not impressed by this and continued to hold on energetically against it.
So it went with a three-goal cushion in the last ten minutes, in which the DHB team ran out of breath a little. With a 4-0 run from 26:29 to 30:29, the Oranje team turned the game around. “We posed big problems for the Netherlands and led for 59 minutes,” said backcourt player Julia Maidhof. “Of course it would have been nicer if we had won. But we’re not going out of the game negatively.”