2024 finalists open EHF EURO Cup with clear wins
The two finalists of the Men's EHF EURO 2024 started their EHF EURO Cup 2026 campaigns victorious. Silver medallists Denmark won the Scandinavian duel against fellow 2026 hosts Norway 32:27, while champions France showed an incredibly strong first half against Sweden before winning 37:31.
Fundamentally, I think it was a really good game. But there were also a few too many blemishes here and there, with too many technical errors in certain periods of the game. I actually think we defended quite well six-on-six — we faced bigger challenges when the Norwegians played seven-on-six. But overall, I think it was a good game under tough conditions with the memorial (for team manager Kai Johannsen and president of the Danish Handball Association Morten Stig Christensen) just before the game.
(Scoring three times on my debut) was a fantastic experience. Of course, we wish we had won, but Denmark are one of the best teams in the world. We had a difficult start of the match, and they got ahead. We picked ourselves up a bit, but they are good.
I'm quite satisfied from a collective point of view. Firstly in relation to the performance that we were able to deliver from the start of the match. We were able to make the difference and I think that’s something to remember. In the second half we perhaps slowed down a little, particularly defensively, but that's also part of the ups and downs of a match. We scored 37 goals tonight and that's something very positive I think, given the offensive difficulties we had last summer.
We are of course very disappointed with the start we had. We got punished very hard for our mistakes. We managed to come together better in the end of the first half and played better in the second half where we played more as a team and got closer even though we didn’t come close enough goal-wise.
