Belarus vs Germany at Men’s EHF EURO

Belarusian handballers are joining today the European Men's Handball Championship matches which take place in Hungary and Slovakia, BelTA reports

photo: www.handball.by

In the first match of Preliminary Group D, Belarusians will play in Bratislava against the German team (the match starts at 8pm today, with live broadcast by Belarus 5 TV channel). In the second match of the preliminary round, Austrians will play against Poles and, on January 16^th, Yuri Shevtsov's trainees will play against Poles. The Belarus-Austria match will close the first stage of the championship on January 18^th.

In Budapest, the national teams of Iceland and Portugal will play today as part of Group B. Yesterday, the Dutch team defeated Hungarians – 31:28.

Below are the results of the first round:

A: Slovenia and North Macedonia – 27:25, Denmark and Montenegro – 30:21;

C: Serbia and Ukraine – 31:23, France and Croatia – 27:22;

E: Spain and Czech Republic – 28:26, Sweden and Bosnia and Herzegovina – 30:18;

F: Russia and Lithuania – 29:27, Norway and Slovakia – 35:25.

The best two teams from the six preliminary groups will advance to the main stage of the European Championship. Then twelve teams will be divided into two groups of six; only two best squads of each group will get to the semi-finals.

At the last European Championship, held in 2020 in Austria, Norway and Sweden, Spain’s handballers won their second gold in a row – defeating Croats in the final with a score of 22:20. Bronze went to Norwegians who proved better than Slovenes – 28:20. Two years ago, the Belarusian national team reached the main stage but failed to make it to the semi-finals: it was placed 10^th as a result. In total, Belarusian handballers played six times in final tournaments of the continental championship and their best result was the 8^th place at the European Championship in Portugal in 1994 (which gathered twelve teams). The Swedish national team became European champion four times, the French – three, while the teams of Denmark, Germany and Spain were twice the best each. Russians won gold once.