is this tournament even viewed as important with no Olympic spots in play? Croatia seems to be taking the tournament like that, the coach says a QF spot is good enough and called up some young guys and didn't call Balic
is this tournament even viewed as important with no Olympic spots in play? Croatia seems to be taking the tournament like that, the coach says a QF spot is good enough and called up some young guys and didn't call Balic
Goluža (our HC) and Gobac (alfa and omega of Croatian handball) are simply dumb, we need to win something for once, enough of 2nd or 3rd place finishes. Not including Balić on the squad is beyond idiotic, even though he's not as good as he once was.
France will crash, no doubt.
They're tired, they're without Gilles, and they're mentally broken by the match fixing scandal.
I wasn't a fan of Karabatić before the scandal (he just looks like a typical blockhead from the Balkans), now I lost all respect for him, IMHO he shouldn't be there until his trial is over and I was a bit surprised that Onesta called him.
Omeyer looked terrible yesterday, their defense looked awful as well. You can really see Dinart is slowing down, which is a shame as I always liked him, despite the fact that he was the main reason France had our number over the years.
Can't wait for Spain vs Croatia tonight. That is the biggest match-up of the tournament so far. Šterbik scares the daylight out of me, he's such a great goalie even tough he look disinterested half the time out there. We need to play a very good defense, force a lot of turnovers and run the counter attack like we did against Hungary and we should be in good shape. Šterbik and Aguinagalde (for Spain) and Kopljar and Alilović (for Croatia) will be the key players in this game.
Croatia wins 27-25 over Spain in Madrid and all that without Lacković (our best left back by far) and Bičanić (our 2nd best left back) playing with a bad back which forced him to miss the 2nd half. Five wins in five games, now onto Belarus in the 1/8 finals and probably France in the 1/4 finals.
Round of 16 matchups with the expectation Hungary beats Algeria in the final group match
Denmark vs. Tunisia
Hungary vs. Poland
Iceland vs. France
Belarus vs. Croatia
Germany vs. Macedonia
Serbia vs. Spain
Brazil vs. Russia
Slovenia vs. Egypt
Great opportunity for a team like Slovenia to make the semifinals; suspect the QF will be DEN/POL, FRA/CRO, GER/ESP, RUS/SVN
Spanish media is happy because the loss means they can't play against France in the 1/4 finals. What a bunch of idiots. I hope Serbia knocks them out, because this kind of behaviour makes me sick and it makes handball look bad to the rest of the world.
