Handball EM: Four more corona cases in the German team

Before the classic against Spain at the start of the main round of the European Championship, Germany’s handball players have been decimated again. There were four more corona cases in the DHB team on Wednesday, the German Handball Association announced on the sidelines of the final training session in Bratislava.

As a result, national coach Alfred Gislason only has a skeleton team available in the duel with the defending champion at the start of the main round this Thursday (6 p.m. / ARD), as against Poland. The affected players are Sebastian Heymann, Djibril M’Bengue and Christoph Steinert as well as a member of the functional team.

The loose training session on Wednesday, in which Heymann, M’Bengue and Steinert and left winger Rune Dahmke were absent, was an indication of this. The training took place on a voluntary basis, it said.

The substitutes Daniel Rebmann and Patrick Zieker, who arrived in Bratislava on Wednesday afternoon, were also there. In total, Gislason has already nominated seven players after there had already been nine positive corona cases in the DHB team in the past few days.

Despite this decimation, the German team won the preliminary round final against Poland on Tuesday with 30:23 and thus took two points into the main round. In addition to Spain, the opponents there are Norway, third at the European Championships, Sweden and Russia, who came second at the World Cup.

Curious: With goalkeeper Joachim Bitter, the team against Poland only had one trained goalkeeper in their ranks. If Bitter had been injured, an outfield player would have moved into goal in Paul Drux.