Why the German handball players look to a promising future
German handball players fail after a big fight in the quarterfinals – the highlights in the video
The German national team missed the semi-finals against France. The DHB team starts the game strong and keeps the game open for a long time, but the favorite turns up in the final phase. The highlights in the video.
In a duel with the overwhelming Olympic champion France, Germany has to admit defeat. Despite the painful failure in the knockout round of the Handball World Championship, there are many encouragers.
Axel Kromer has held a number of posts at the German Handball Association. He was a youth coordinator, assistant coach for the junior team and later for the senior national team, and has held the position of sports director for around five years. He has not yet distinguished himself as a historian, and yet he made a very appropriate assessment during the main round of the Handball World Championship. “I don’t want to put the brakes on euphoria, no way,” he said. “But we also have to recognize that the quarter-finals we are proud of will not go down in history.”
The German handball players have had to deal with such insights since the knockout round against the overwhelming French around the stars Dika Mem and Ludovic Fabregas on Wednesday evening in Gdansk. While the Olympic champion meets Sweden on Friday in Stockholm, the selection of national coach Alfred Gislason can only play for places five to eight at the same place. First opponent there is Egypt. What initially looks like disillusionment and missing out on a great historic event turns out to be much more encouragement for the future.
Despite the quarter-finals, the German national handball team played a good World Cup
Quelle: dpa/Jan Woitas
Germany not only won five out of seven games at this World Cup, some of them spectacularly, but also showed with passion and team spirit that the second most popular team sport in the nation has lost none of its appeal. Good TV ratings of up to seven million viewers prove this.
Two huge talents in the national team
At the first international appearance of a German national team since the footballers’ World Cup disaster in Qatar, there were even more important insights for the world’s largest handball association: Julian Köster and Juri Knorr used the big stage to draw lasting attention to themselves.
The Gummersbacher as a shrewd defense specialist, the lion player as a dangerous director. It has been a long time since there were two such huge talents in one team, and since both are only 22, they can shape the face of German and international handball for the next ten years.
Juri Knorr (r) played a very strong World Cup – the future belongs to him
Quelle: dpa/Jan Woitas
Home advantage medal contender
The fact that goalkeeper Andreas Wolff finally showed consistent world-class performances again can also be counted as a success. In addition, Johannes Golla, 25, is already a captain who is the smart leader of a team that fires the imagination for a promising future.
After all, there are already a few tournaments coming up in the near future where Germany, with the home advantage behind them, should definitely be a medal candidate again: the European Championship in January 2024, followed by the World Cup in Germany in 2027. Experiences like the one on Wednesday evening against France or before at the end of the Main round in the duel with Norway will help to learn from them and gradually reduce the gap to the top nations.
The entry in the history books mentioned by sports director Kromer has not yet taken place at the 2023 World Cup in Poland and Sweden. But he will follow. Soon.
