Germany will face Brazil on Saturday

Alfred Gislason was more in his chair than he was sitting. There was emptiness around him, the seats next to him were free, but even if you tried to locate something like a line of sight at the national coach, you saw above all this: emptiness. At that moment it was still too early to look ahead after the handball national team’s 28:32 against Spain on Thursday.

Gislason, who is said to be a rock to the Germans with all his experience and charisma, looked like someone who first had to regain his composure himself. He said a little later on the ZDF microphone that his team had robbed themselves of their chance to win – and maybe he was a little angry with himself, that he had overestimated his team. I got carried away by the good work with the group and the spirit that undoubtedly emanates from this year.

When it came down to it, his team was no different from that of his predecessor Christian Prokop: Where other teams embody world class, the German team comes across as a surprise bag. Capable of playing the stars from the sky, at least in phases of a game, but also able to fall into another mode at any time: underground, self-destructive. Just like on Thursday evening when a 25:22 tour became a 26:31.

World Cup not over for the Germans

The World Cup is not over for the Germans yet. Two wins over Brazil (8.30 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the handball world championship and on ZDF) and Poland (8.30 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the handball world championship and on ARD) could still bring the quarter-finals if the Spaniards and Poles each against Hungary win. Then Germany, Poland and Hungary would each have 6: 2 points, and the best goal difference from the three-way comparison would decide.

Axel Kromer, the sports director of the DHB, derived from this in the video press conference on Friday the request to only look at their own games and not “what other teams are doing, what might be on the last day of the game”. The catch: If the Hungarians get even one point against Poland this Saturday, the German team will be out before they even step back on the stage. Johannes Golla didn’t seem to think of a possible progress any more when he said that “the chance is almost zero”.

The Germans were already looking further ahead, towards another hoped-for profit. Golla spoke of the “experience that we as a young team have to take with us in order to present ourselves as ripped off in the future”. And Kromer also placed this perspective in the foreground: that the experiences of players like Golla, Sebastian Firnhaber, Juri Knorr or Moritz Preuss in Egypt “will help tremendously that the squad will be bigger for the next tasks”. When it comes to the Olympic qualification in March, for example.

The end of the dream film

That’s true, and from what you can see and hear, Gislason and the team are on the right track. Whether higher ambitions than before can be derived from this is another question. First, because you never know whether all men will really be available. In handball it is often helpful to live in the realism of the here and now. And secondly because the DHB team has been trying for a long time and in different constellations to take the next step.

When analyzing the defeat, sports director Kromer resisted playing off youth against experience. He was right – just a little different from what he might have meant. It was just like against Hungary that too many mistakes and inadequacies added up, at almost all levels and regardless of age group. The script could seem uncomfortably familiar.

After an inhibited first half, in which the German team was already four goals behind, they celebrated the art of self-unleashing they knew: Incredible energies and emotions were suddenly released, 15 intoxicating minutes that brought a three-goal lead had already started to rattle the head cinema with what now seemed possible. When you imagined Johannes Bitter throwing his arms and legs even more daringly around, when you saw Timo Kastening or Uwe Gensheimer sailing in an endless loop from the outside into the circle and throwing gate after gate, when you believed that the young Juri Knorr the older Spanish gentlemen would finally buy the guts. But suddenly someone came in and turned on the light, the dream film was over.

Not much was missing

It wasn’t just the Spanish legal guardians who found the German nonsense too colorful. For this purpose, the inadequacies of Gislason’s team were brightly illuminated again. The players felt, as Golla described it, like “things that broke our necks in the first half are coming back”. Above all, awarded throws, but also the respect for the Spanish attackers. And there was no one in the square who could stop it.

The Germans don’t have Raúl Entrerríos, they don’t have a goalkeeper at this tournament who surpasses himself, Andreas Wolff from 2016 is just a fading memory. Captain Gensheimer also seems to be looking for himself. “With a bit of routine, a bit of luck and maybe a few more defenders, I’m pretty sure that we would be here without losing points,” said Gislason. It should sound like: Not much was missing. But then again, it was quite a lot.