Handball World Cup: Germany fails in extra time to Portugal

Home flight instead of semi-finals: For the German handball players, the dream of the first World Cup medal has burst for a thriller without a happy ending for 18 years. Despite a significant increase in the second half and an outstanding goalkeeper Andreas Wolff, the team of national coach Alfred Gislason lost the quarter -finals against Portugal with 30:31 (26:26, 9:13) after extension and eliminated. While the southern Europeans challenge defending champion and Olympic champion Denmark in the semi-finals, the DHB selection on Thursday flies home without the hoped-for precious metal.

In front of 7,457 spectators in Oslo, right-wing Lukas Zerbe was the best thrower for the German team with nine goals, which in the entire tournament could not build on the performance of the Olympic silver coup almost six months ago and continue to the first medal at a world championship since the gold -Triumph from 2007 has to wait.

Previously, Denmark had celebrated the 35th World Cup victory in a series in the 33:21 (15:12) against Brazil and easily reached the pre-conclusion round. The second semi-finals contest a record champion France and co-host Croatia on Thursday in Zagreb.

Before the kick-off, the timely return of playmaker Juri Knorr, who had missed the main round games against Italy and Tunisia, had caused a lot of optimism in the DHB team. As expected, the 24-year-old was only on the bench and from there saw a nervous start of his teammates, who are particularly swords in attack. Renars Uscins only scored the first goal after six minutes.

The fact that the Portuguese were not already hung up at this point was at goalkeeper Wolff. The 33-year-old fended off five litters in the first five minutes. Nevertheless, the DHB team was back early in the 1: 5 (10th minute).

The national coach reacted to the false start with a break, after which Knorr came to the floor. The playmaker brought more speed to the German attack game, which from then on did not ran a little better, but still not error -free.

Fortunately, Wolff was still a strong backing. The goalkeeper from the German record champion THW Kiel always had to iron out the weaknesses of his forefenses and was visibly angry about it. So it went into the break with a four-goal deficit.

After the change, the German team acted more concentrated in attack. And the defense also got more access to the fast and agile Portuguese. At 17:18 (43.) the DHB team was back and now much better in the game.

“Now we have to motle less – especially me. They have no idea what to do,” Gislason cheered on his team during a break. Shortly afterwards the equalization and a little later the first tour to 19:18. In the final phase, the German team gave up the narrow lead despite a number of parades from Wolff and was empty hands after the ten -minute extra layer.