Top two dogs clash, hosts Germany under big pressure
France and Austria, the top two and the only unbeaten teams in main round group I, face off on Monday, with a semi-finals berth on the cards.
A fifth win in six matches at the Men’s EHF EURO 2024 would see France safely through to the final weekend – unless Austria can spring yet another surprise on the competition.
Hosts Germany will be aiming to keep their dream alive, but they face a must-win match against Hungary, while Croatia and Iceland eye their first win in the group when they meet in the opener.
What they have showed on the court implies that we have a lot of respect for them. They beat Spain, they almost did the same thing with Germany. Yesterday they lost a point more than they snatched one. We are playing the team that is ranked right behind us, and that shows their quality.
We have been able to beat big handball nations before, we took a point against Germany, but this is another level. France is a contender for the gold medal. Their players are like machines, the threat comes from every player, this will be very, very hard.
Our next game is Germany in Germany, so it's hard to say anything else than ‘let's see’. The only sure thing is that we will fight for the next two games, try to win them both and we'll see where it takes us. We really want to play the 5-6 final to get a chance to go to the Olympics, but if we can do better than that, then of course we will do it.
