How five youngsters are shaking up EHF EURO 2026

Francisco Costa, the top scorer

The obvious choice for this listing is Portugal’s Francisco Costa. “Kiko” is the top scorer of the tournament so far with 29 goals overall, or 9.7 per game. He is outstanding from the seven-metre line. In 12 attempts, he has only missed once (91.2 per cent). Among the eight players with at least 10 attempts, only North Macedonia’s Filip Kuzmanovski (12/12) was better.

From the field, however, the 20-year-old is not as efficient as he was in the past. But a 58.1 per cent success rate from there is still not bad at all.

Of course, the great responsibility he bears for the Portuguese team also plays a role here. This shows his offensive responsibility, which is the share of field shots, received seven-metre penalty throws and turnovers on his team. With 22.5 per cent, he ranks eighth here among all players.

Nikola Roganović, the penalty king

Like Costa, Swede Nikola Roganović is also an outstanding seven-metre penalty taker. He has not missed a single one of his eight attempts. From non-penalty attempts he even is slightly more efficient than the Portuguese player with 62.5 per cent. He is even one of only 29 back court players with at least four field shots per game who have not been blocked.

With 15.6 per cent the offensive responsibility of the 19-year-old is of course clearly lower than Costa’s but it’s the third highest in Sweden’s squad. Only Felix Claar and Lukas Sandell rank before him there.

One reason for this is that he has not only been strong at converting seven-metre throws, but also at getting them. He has received 1.5 seven-metre penalty throws per game so far, which is the best among the Swedes, the eighth best among all back court players and the 13th best overall.

Marcos Fis, the best shooter

Spaniard Marcos Fis is, at just 18 years old, the youngest of the five players that we take a closer look at here. So, it’s no surprise that his offensive responsibility is the lowest of the five players with 7.5 per cent. But even so, he is the second most efficient from the field with a shooting percentage of 72.7 per cent. Among all players with at least 10 attempts, he ranks 11th.

He has been particularly impressive from distance so far. With an 80 per cent success rate (4/5) from more than 8.5 metres (empty goal shots do not count) he is the most efficient distance shooter among all with at least five attempts.

Metrics derived from Expected Goals, that we took a closer look at in the last article, also show Fis’ qualities. Expected Goals show the probabilities of a shot being scored on average based on statistical models that are trained with more than 100,000 shots from the past. Among 107 players with more than 10 field attempts, Fis over-performed his Expected Goals the seventh-most with 30.1 per cent.

Patrick Anderson, the man of quality

While Fis was the youngest player that we look at here, Norwegian Patrick Anderson is the oldest, as he just turned 21 last month. And this age advantage seems to bring him greater wisdom as he is not only the one with the highest non-penalty quality of shots among the five but also with the second highest quality shots among all 72 players listed as back court players with more than 10 shots taken.

On average, 69.1 per cent of Anderson's shots are expected to be converted. The only player among the 72 players who is better than that is, as always, Mathias Gidsel (70.7 per cent).

Anderson cannot match Gidsel’s level yet, but that is not too much of a problem. Underperforming on high-quality shots is still better than slightly overperforming on low-quality attempts. His actual scoring percentage of 55 per cent is somewhere around average.

Óli Mittún, Mr. Super-efficient

The Faroe Islands’ Óli Mittún, the final player that we are looking at, is probably the most interesting one, at least from a data point of view. He played an outstanding tournament scoring 7.7 goals per game, all of them from the field, which is the second best, behind, of course, Mathias Gidsel.

With his cousin Elias á Skipagøtu not being at 100 per cent Mittún stepped up and was the player with the highest offensive responsibility for the Faroe Islands with 24.7 per cent. That’s the fifth highest of the competition.

Despite this high burden he was extremely efficient: 88.5 per cent is the highest non-penalty scoring efficiency of EHF EURO 2026 among all 55 players with more than 15 attempts.

Mittún’s metrics based on Expected Goals show how this outstanding shooting percentage comes about. Among the 16 players with at least 25 or more field shots only Gidsel has a higher shot quality. In addition, Mittún’s shot making was excellent as well, as he scored 34.8 per cent more goals than expected, the highest among these players.

But it's not just the 20-year-old's finishing skills that deserve special mention. He also created a lot of chances for his team and earned 2.3 seven-metre penalty throws per game, again the best in the competition.

More from data analyst Julian Rux can be found at Handballytics.de. There you can read his latest articles, in which he analyses all kinds of handball topics from new, data-based perspectives. You can also find him on Instagram, Facebook, Threads, and WhatsApp Channels.

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