France lost its first match at the Euro (29-32). She lost in Herning against the best team in the world, a Danish armada quadruple world champion and reigning Olympic champion.
The French European champions fell at the end of a fight of crazy intensity, a tight duel from the first to the last minute in an Arena filled with 15,000 furious Viking fans.
This mano a mano could have been a final as has often been the case for ten years on the handball planet. This may still be the case here in ten days. In the meantime, it was just a group match. The Blues, although solid, lost it. They were solid, courageous, present in the impact, without ever giving up. And there’s not much to throw away in what they showed. But they fell with “a lot of frustration” summarizes Thibaud Briet on BeIN SPORTS.
This narrow defeat does not eliminate the France team for the moment. She remains in the race to defend her title. She just burned a joker and she only had one in her pocket.
Let’s quickly recall a point of regulation: at the end of this main round which brings together 6 teams, only the first two in the ranking in one week will qualify for the semi-final.
At the end of the first matches, who can say at this time who will come out of it. Everyone still has a chance. Only Germany, who won Portugal a little earlier in the day (32-30), escaped unscathed. The Germans have 4 points. They are ahead of France, Denmark, Portugal and Norway, winner of the Spaniards (35-34), which has two. Spain is behind with zero points and already seems out of the race.
For the Blues, the equation is now simple. If they want to retain their title won two years ago and meet Denmark once again in ten days in the final here, they have no choice. They have to win every match that comes. A defeat will mean elimination. This means successively beating Portugal on Saturday, Spain on Monday then Germany next Wednesday. There is no other solution. The indecision is total for France but also for all the nations in this group of death which brings together the best teams on the planet. We suspected he would cause some damage. There will be some, some big ones won’t make it to the last four. That’s a certainty.
