The end of the most spectacular of all major competitions in the history of handball will be put in the European temple of this sport, the "Lanskes Arena" in Cologne.
At the 16th European Championship in Germany, all boundaries were broken both in terms of television viewing and the number of fans in the halls, because there were over a million of them!
All the games for the final weekend were sold out a long time ago, and during the entire championship, occupancy was as high as 98 percent. By the way, the semi-final with Denmark in Germany was watched by 9,7 million people on TV screens.
All records are likely to be broken today, as two big matches are played, and the stakes are not only medals, but also a place at the Olympic Games in Paris.
Sweden and Germany will fight for that in a direct confrontation in the match for 3rd place (15 p.m.), which will be judged by the best Montenegrin referees, Ivan Pavićević i Miloš Raznatović.
The Swedes were twice victims of refereeing injustices at the championship, as they had a clear goal disallowed for a draw with Denmark, and then an irregular goal was recognized. Eloim Prandi, with which France won extra time and later celebrated in the semi-finals.
The Swedish Handball Association's appeal was rejected, and the elected officials Glenn Solberg explained that they requested a video analysis from the Macedonian judges Nachevski i Nikolova, because Prandi first raised his right and then his left leg before shooting from a free kick.
"If we had protested, one of us would have been expelled. We received such a warning from the EHF after the match with Denmark, they were quite clear that we would be given red cards for such behavior. "We asked the referees to watch the video of Prandi's goal, but they didn't want to," he said Jim Gottfriedson.
And in the final, two of today's best national teams, France and Denmark, will collide (17.45:XNUMX p.m.).
This will be their fourth consecutive competition where their duel directly decides the medals - the "experts" won 25:23 in the final of the Olympic Games in Tokyo, and the Danes took revenge in the duels for bronze at EHF Euro 2022 (35:32 after extra time). and the final of last year's World Championship in Sweden (34:29).
The French were at the mandatory briefing yesterday, but he only addressed the journalists Nikola Karabatic and it all took 25 seconds.
"We are trying to relax, because we only had a day off for the biggest game of the season. I'm only focused on the match with Denmark," said the best handball player of all time.
Bonus video:
