The defeat against Hungary will be remembered for a long time, and it won't hurt too much if the Montenegrin handball players qualify for the main stage of the 16th European Championship.
The rival was offered to the "lions" many times, who missed an attack for a draw, so they had to admit defeat.
"I have to congratulate the players, they fought for 60 minutes. We had problems in defense with the pivots, they kept it tight for us. We came, however, in a position to even win, but we made a lot of mistakes. At the time-out, I wanted to throw in the seventh player, but it crossed my mind that we don't have a pivot. We decided to shoot from outside, which worked for us during the game, because the goalkeeper defended it poorly. It was a good idea, but it didn't go through," said Vlado Šola.
At the time-out 28 seconds before the end, with the score 25:24, the Croatian expert wanted to draw an action for seven players, but he realized that he did not have two pivots. That's why he asked Branko Vujović what to play, and the right back became a tragedy, because Kristof Palašić saved his shot.
"It's nothing unusual. Sometimes the coach decides, sometimes he leaves it to the most experienced players. It was a good decision, but we didn't implement it. Banjo is our main player, hierarchically the ball should have gone to him. I'm sorry that we lost, I hope that we will win these games, and that as soon as possible".
Already on Sunday, the rival is Iceland, which in the last 100 seconds made the series 3:0 and won a draw with Serbia (27:27).
"We have to recover emotionally from the defeat, because in two days we play Iceland, who will want to make amends for the draw against Serbia, because they feel they are favorites in the group. We have to think carefully about what we did well and what we did badly," Shola pointed out.
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