Players of the France team, during their match against Hungary, in Cologne (Germany), January 24, 2024. INA FASSBENDER / AFP
Capable in the same match of the best (often), of the worst (sometimes), but also of the worst (more rarely), the French handball team advances towards the semi-finals of the Euro without a label on the back. Neither favorites nor outsiders, the Blues can nevertheless claim a certain consistency in high performance, before facing Sweden, Friday January 26 in Cologne (Germany): here they are qualified for the fifth time in a row for the last four of a of the three major handball competitions – a series which began with the appointment of Guillaume Gille as coach four years ago.
First at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, fourth and second at the 2021 and 2023 World Championships, fourth at Euro 2022, to win in Germany, they will have to deal with a curse inherited from their predecessors, Barjots, Costauds and other Experts : the French team – despite three continental victories (2006, 2010, 2014) – has never won a Euro when this competition was organized in the same year as the Olympic Games. Six months before the Paris Olympics, where they will put their title on the line, Captain Luka Karabatic’s men have the opportunity to demonstrate that fate does not exist in the land of the little sticky ball.
Before facing Sweden, a match without stakes awaited the Blues, Wednesday January 24, against Hungary. Like a scent of déjà vu floated in Cologne: the reigning Olympic champions started the match poorly (-3) before breaking away (+5) by developing their fast game on ” big space “ – their specialty – then to end the first half badly (20-18). The squad review desired by Guillaume Gille finally made it possible to offer playing time to those who had had little until then, and win with seriousness 35-32. “It was a real match”indicates the coach, a way of not minimizing the quality of the opposition.
Sweden relaunched
Sweden will be a tougher opponent. The team coached since 2020 by the Norwegian Glenn Solberg has finished chasing a glorious past, marked by four world titles which were starting to smell a little dusty (between 1954 and 1999) and the memory of one of the greatest players in the history of handball, Magnus Wislander (386 caps, 1,191 goals). A victory at Euro 2022 relaunched the team led by center-half Jim Gottfridsson (voted best player in the competition that year) and composed almost exclusively of players playing in foreign clubs (many of them German).
