Handball
No European Championship revenge: DHB selection has no chance against Sweden
National coach Alfred Gislason and the DHB selection lost the international match against Sweden. photo
© Tom Weller/dpa
The German handball players simply cannot win against Sweden. The revenge for the small European Championship final is also lost. The defeat fits into the current image that the association presents.
The association is in the pillory, the team is still struggling Constance: Eleven weeks before the Olympic Games, Germany’s handball players are not looking good on and off the floor.
In the first appearance after the much-criticized announcement of the separation from sports director Axel Kromer at the end of the year, the DHB selection suffered a 28:34 (11:19) defeat in the European Championship revenge against Sweden and thus failed to at least make positive headlines in terms of sport care for.
“I’m happy with the second half, but not at all with the first half. We discussed a lot before the game. That’s why I’m very disappointed with how we started,” said national coach Alfred Gislason. “Unfortunately we repeated the game from the European Championship.”
As in the small final of the last home European Championship, the DHB team put on a disappointing performance in front of 5,014 spectators in Växjö in the first half and was shown off at times. “It’s incredibly annoying that we don’t learn from the mistakes of the past,” complained captain Johannes Golla. “It’s extremely bitter what we did in the first half. It’s a bit of a headache.”
DHB selection without Knorr
Thanks to a significant improvement after the change, at least an impending debacle was averted. The best German throwers were Golla, Julian Köster and Franz Semper with five goals each. “The result dampens the mood,” admitted Golla.
Without the sick director Juri Knorr and the injured Renars Uscins, Jannik Kohlbacher, Sebastian Heymann and Nils Lichtlein, the DHB selection was behind from the start. In defense, the fourth-placed team in the European Championships barely had any access to the agile Swedes, and goalkeeper David Späth wasn’t a factor either. The home team was quickly ahead by four goals at 7:3 after a good seven minutes.
Things weren’t going well in attack either. As at the home European Championships, the German team sinned at the end. Clear opportunities were not taken advantage of on several occasions. The result: in the middle of the first half, the deficit was five goals for the first time at 7:12. Gislason responded with a time out, but things didn’t get any better after that. Aided by numerous missed shots from the German team, the three-crown team even pulled ahead by nine goals shortly before half-time.
“It was very negligent how we handled our chances. We missed the Swedish goalkeeper nine or ten times and made life difficult for ourselves,” said Gislason, criticizing the lack of efficiency in finishing.
Criticism of the DHB’s external representation
After the change, Andreas Wolff moved between the posts and gave his front men more security with a few saves. In addition, the DHB selection was now much more concentrated. At the back they grabbed more energetically and picked up the pace at the front. However, it was no longer enough to turn things around. “The deficit was simply too big. A game lasts 60 minutes,” said Gislason.
Before the game, DHB President Andreas Michelmann spoke publicly for the first time about the reasons for the separation from sports director Kromer on December 31st of this year. There were “different opinions between us as to how the position of sports director should be filled. These have become more severe over time,” Michelmann told the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”.
Accordingly, the association wanted to continue with the 47-year-old Kromer, but had planned a different task profile for the official apart from the men’s selection. “If you get to the heart of it, it was our mistake to appoint Axel Kromer as an absolute handball expert to the board almost seven years ago,” admitted Michelmann.
After Stefan Kretzschmar, former Vice President Bob Hanning had previously criticized the DHB’s external representation. “The way the association communicated the news is a straight six,” said Hanning in an interview with the Internet portal Sport1. It is a continuation of the communications disaster that began with the announcement of national coach Gislason’s contract extension. “Nothing was learned from the media issue,” complained the managing director of Bundesliga runners-up Füchse Berlin.