The second showdown with the world champion ends with a clear defeat for the team of national coach Alfred Gislason. Again, a class difference becomes clear.
Germany’s handball players around the outstanding Andreas Wolff said goodbye to the audience after the second bankruptcy against world champion Denmark.
Ten months before the European Championships at home, the team of national coach Alfred Gislason was again clearly shown at 21:28 (10:14) in Hamburg how big the gap to the world leaders is. “We’re quite a long way from a team like Denmark. We knew it would be difficult but we expected more,” said Gislason. The coach emphasized: “With the eagle on our chest, we want different results.”
Wolff and Knorr top again
In front of 12,123 spectators, director Juri Knorr was the best scorer with nine goals for the chanceless DHB selection, which had already clearly lost the first leg in Aalborg by 23:30. “The attacking performance broke our necks in both games. In the first game we had 25 misses and four technical errors, this time it was 23 and nine. That’s very disappointing,” criticized the national coach.
A ray of hope was only goalkeeper Wolff, who stood out with 15 saves as in the first duel. This corresponded to a top quota of 36 percent of saved litters. “Andy was good in both games,” Gislason praised the 31-year-old. However, Denmark’s keeper Emil Nielsen was at the same high level.
The German team, which again had to do without the sick backcourt player Julian Köster, remained without a win in the fourth game of the EURO Cup. At the end of the competition, which serves to prepare for the European Championship in 2024, the opponents will be European champions Sweden and World Cup third-placed Spain at the end of April.
Concentrated start, then “tuning problems”
“It was a class difference and not the reaction we were hoping for,” admitted left winger Lukas Mertens from German champions SC Magdeburg after the second handball lesson in three days. “We had planned a lot more. You can see that we still have a lot to work on.”
Backcourt player Paul Drux from Füchsen Berlin rated the performance similarly: “We didn’t learn from most of the mistakes we made in the first game. We had some coordination problems in defense and threw away too many balls up front.”
Before kick-off, there was a minute’s silence for the victims of the killing spree in the Hanseatic city. After that, the German team started concentrated and had gained a two-goal lead in the seventh minute. But then the mistakes multiplied. Mertens failed from the left wing, captain Johannes Golla missed a counterattack – and Patrick Groetzki even threw wide of the goal from the right wing. The consequence was the 9:5 (19th minute) for the Danes, who were not even at their best, and who were missing eight players from the winning World Cup squad.
Only optimism remains until the home EM
During this phase, Germany remained without a goal of their own for twelve minutes. It was mainly thanks to Wolff’s sometimes spectacular saves that the deficit didn’t get any bigger before the break. “The defense was better today than in the first game,” said Gislason.
At the beginning of the second half, thanks to Kai Häfner’s goal, Germany came within two goals again to make it 12:14 (33 rd ). But it was only a flash in the pan. After that, the Danish team also pulled away with the players from the second and third row and made it clear that the difference to the world top for the DHB team is still big. Gislason said goodbye to the Hanseatic city with mixed feelings: “I’m optimistic that we’ll play better at the European Championships in ten months. But I can’t say whether we’ll beat Denmark then.”