The Lions are fighting against Finland for a World Cup play-off spot, Dinar: We are the favorites and we need to justify that role

Montenegrin handball players gathered before the match against Finland in the 2nd round of qualifications for the World Championship, which will be organized by Germany in early 2027.

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Photo: Kolektiff
Photo: Kolektiff
Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.

The nightmare from Scandinavia must be "erased" against the Scandinavian team - two matches of truth are ahead of the Montenegrin handball team, anything other than passing would be one of the major failures of our handball team.

After defeats to Slovenia, the Faroe Islands and Switzerland in Oslo at the European Championship, the "Lions" will have to start their journey to the World Cup from the 2nd round of qualifying. They will face Finland on Thursday (5:30 p.m.) in Vantaa and three days later in Podgorica (6 p.m.) in the play-offs, where they will face Slovenia.

"We are the favorites against Finland, we have played them twice and we need to show that we are competitive and justify that role," said Montenegrin coach Didije Dinar ahead of today's gathering in the "Verde" hall.

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The legendary Frenchman also touched on January's EHF Euro, which Montenegro finished in second-to-last place, with two heavy defeats.

"We showed two faces at the European Championship. Against Slovenia (41:40) it was a good performance, which was not the case against the Faroe Islands (37:24) and Switzerland (43:26). I would link that to the psychological state that prevailed in the team at the time. We should not forget that we were missing goalkeepers Nebojša Simić and Nikola Matović, as well as Vuk Lazović and Aleksandar Bakić, who is a very important player on the 'five' in defense, and Miloš Božović was also injured. Montenegro is not the same team without five players," believes Dinar.

The coach also commented on the situation with Vuk Borozan, who once again skipped national team action while playing for the club.

"Borozan? The entire context is taken into account, generally a lot of things go into whether a player will be there or not. We need to take everything into account, there were a lot of injuries and problems, and because of all that, the team did not give what it could. We have a young Bakić, who we see as someone who should cover the 'three' or 'four' positions. There are also Radojica Čepić and Miodrag Ćorsović, and Bakić is a new name in that position. When we took over the national team, it was a different team, we learned a lot about our national team. The current team is different than then, there are many new players," concluded Dinar.

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