Three more groups start EHF EURO 2026 campaigns
On Friday, the 2024 runners-up and EHF EURO 2026 co-hosts, Denmark, begin the chase for the long-coveted European gold against North Macedonia in Herning in group B, while Portugal face underdogs Romania earlier in the day.
The action in Oslo sees group D open their campaigns, with Slovenia playing Montenegro and the Faroe Islands taking on Switzerland.
The sole group located in Kristianstad starts with a match between Iceland — a team eager to reach the final weekend — and Italy, while later on two familiar faces go head-to-head as Hungary and Poland start their tournaments.
We have six new players who play their first major tournament. We kept the base of the team, but we have to integrate new players. This is a new, important factor to introduce these young players to keep pro-active for the future. Let’s see what we will do. We have a lot of work and I hope we can enjoy our process here in Denmark.
We are well prepared. We know that always these kinds of teams makes it really difficult for you, they are playing really physical, even though we want to try to keep the pace high and play a little bit more fast speed handball, and not going so much into physical duels with them.
We are playing the first match against the best team in the world in the last 10 years, Denmark. We are very excited to play against them. They are at home, that will be very difficult for us, but we have nothing to lose in this match and we will try to enjoy this match.
It’s the European Championship. Very high level. We need to do the maximum to try the second round, the main round. Today we have one day more to prepare the game against Slovenia and I hope the best for this tournament. Only this.
Everyone is very excited to finally start with the tournament. Now we are settling in here in Oslo — a bit cold, but we’re used to it in the Faroe Islands. But we're very excited to play in two days against Switzerland. There are going to be, I don't know, six, seven thousand Faroese supporters, so it's going to be special for us.
We're really, really happy to be here. I think that we are quite confident. Of course, we know how tough and how equal also our group is, so I think everything is open. It's kind of a group where you can be first and last for every team, in my opinion. But we had three quite good preparation games on home ground.
I expect a really tough match. We have analysed their matches, and I’m really impressed. It’s a good team, a different team with a really good and experienced coach. We have to be really focused and clear about our match. If we don’t perform at our best, we will get in trouble.
Our goal is to reach the main round. We're not here to play against Iceland, Poland, and Hungary and then go home again. Of course, we're not the favourites in the group, but that may be an advantage for us. You never know what will happen in an EHF EURO opening match. I think two wins will be enough to reach the main round. But it goes without saying that it won't be easy.
It was a really nice tournament two years ago, but since the Olympic Games we have built a new team. We have some new, younger players on the team and want to surprise some teams at this tournament. But first, we concentrate on the first match, as it will be a very hard game against Poland.
