“This is totally bitter”
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Status: 09:18 a.m. | Reading time: 2 minutes
– – –Uwe Gensheimer (left) and Paul Drux are stunned – the German national team loses after a big fight against Croatia
Credit: dpa / Robert Michael
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Germany loses to Croatia in the main round of the European Handball Championship. The team throws away the victory in the final phase and has only theoretical medal chances. Croatia is smarter at the crucial moment.
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An martial rhetoric was not lacking in advance. Croatia’s team manager Igor Vori spoke of a “sporting war” that would be fought on the field of the Wiener Stadthalle for an hour. Germany’s shooting star Timo Kastening expected “a nice fight”. And national coach Christian Prokop predicted an “intense, hot game”.
In the end it was a mixture of everything that happened there on Saturday evening at the continental title fights of handball players in Austria’s capital. In the duel with Croatia, which was regarded as the key duel on the way to the semifinals, Germany lost 24:25 (14:11) despite an appealing performance and now has almost no chance of progressing with two points in the main round.
“We fought well and got into the game well. From the 45 minute we made simple mistakes. Then unfortunately it goes like this. We didn’t gamble enough, ”said Paul Drux.
– –Germany gave Croatia a huge cramp
Credit: dpa / Robert Michael
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The game against Austria follows on Monday, the Czech Republic is waiting for the opponents on Wednesday (20:30). Both encounters are considered to be solvable tasks in the camp of the German Handball Federation (DHB), but the bankruptcies against Spain and Croatia are likely to block the Germans’ way to the semi-finals.
“This is totally bitter”
“It’s totally bitter. In the second half we struggled very hard in the attack. We did it really well for 40 minutes, but in the end the result counts, ”said Prokop.
The fact that Germany found itself successively in this tournament ten days ago after a difficult EM start was also evident in the game against the Croats for their world stars Domagoj Duvnjak, Igor Karacic and Luka Cindric despite the bankruptcy.
At the back goalkeeper Andreas Wolff presented himself as in the best of times, the defense against boss Hendrik Pekeler cleared away and in the attack the team of national coach Christian Prokop acted extremely variable. As with the 31:23 success in the first main round game against Belarus, both Paul Drux and Philipp Weber knew how to please as game designers.
Nevertheless, it was not enough in the end because the Croatians delivered a strong second half. “Huge respect for Germany, that was the best performance of yours at the EM, you fought to the end,” said Duvnjak. The game could have been a successful maturity test for the DHB selection, which has to do without six players at the European Championships and yet, as with the 2016 triumph, does not struggle with the misery. However, it was not enough in Vienna for the really big hit.
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