Germany’s handball players have suffered a severe setback. The 22:22 draw against Austria makes the medal mission at the home European Championship more complicated.
After the bitter setback against Austria, Alfred Gislason walked across the floor with a dark expression on his face, captain Johannes Golla stared at the ground in consternation: Germany’s handball players have suffered a surprising setback on their mission to win a medal at their home European Championship. It was only with a lot of effort that Germany saved a 22:22 (11:12), only the strong comeback on Saturday evening gave them courage for the rest of the tournament.
“I think you could see on every face that this hurts us incredibly,” said Golla on the ARD microphone: “That was incredibly bad of us and may be depriving us of our goals. We are playing the worst game in terms of attacking effectiveness “So we won’t achieve anything in the tournament, but we have the fans behind us.”
“Atrocious” number of missed throws
Gislason criticized his team’s weak offensive performance. “We lost this point in attack, the defense was good, and Andi was very good,” he said about the defense and the once again extremely strong goalkeeper Andreas Wolff. The high number of missed throws is “cruel”.
Only a show of strength in the final quarter of an hour and another great Wolff in goal secured the German team a potentially valuable point. The DHB selection was already behind 16:21 twelve minutes before the end before Germany, egged on by the 19,750 fans, caught up goal by goal and equalized in a nerve-wracking final phase.
The best German thrower was Juri Knorr with six goals. The Lanxess Arena fortress has had a scratch since Saturday evening: so far, Germany had won all tournament games in Cologne’s “Cathedral of Handball”.
For the medal games, the German team (3:3 points) now has to win the remaining games and is dependent on support: Germany will play the other games on Monday (8.30 p.m./ZDF and Dyn) against Hungary (4:2) and on Wednesday ( 8.30 p.m./ARD and Dyn) against Croatia (1:5). Only the top two in the group of six advance to the semi-finals. France is the leader with 6:0 points.