Hispanics exhaust the wild card against France

Spain faltered at the only time in the handball World Cup in which it could afford it. Already qualified for the quarterfinals, they lost their first game in the tournament against France, that black beast of the Hispanics that took the duel and the first place in group I in the main round. The implications of the setback are minimal, as they will have to wait for today’s confrontation between Germany and Norway to find out their rival, who will be the winner and therefore first in group III.

There was not much at stake but a duel between Spain and France in the world of handball is never friendly. The countless chapters of the rivalry between the two 40×20 powers prevent relaxation and the first place in the group was in dispute. However, with both teams in the quarterfinals, the stake lost its drama and invited rotations and tests, which I did not experiment, before the final phase.

That the French coach, Guillaume Gille, reserved the legend Nikola Karabatic, and his Spanish counterpart did the same with his starting centre-back, Agustín Casado, and one of his best defensive specialists, Iñaki Peciña, was already illuminating in terms of the significance of the party despite the attractive poster.

In this context, the game produced excellent sensations at the start, with a prominent role played by two men who had played a lesser role in recent games. The left-handed Garciandia brought out his powerful shot from beyond nine meters while goalkeeper Rodrigo Corrales accumulated merit saves in the opposite area of ​​the track. All resources will be few in the fight against the best on the planet and Jordi Ribera watched with satisfaction as two of his Hispanics carried their trusty backpack against the powerful France.

Equality and a reduced score that was largely due to the goalkeepers set the tone in the first half. Everything was under control as we passed through the first quarter of an hour when a series of failures by Spain in attack and the success of the Frenchmen Remili and Tournat in directing and working on the pivot established the first significant advantage for France after a partial of 0-4 (6-9).

Only the nerve of the young left winger Dani Fernández sustained Spain, so Ribera stopped the game with a timeout and pulled the Dujshebaev brothers to change the dynamic. The reaction was positive, as the defensive intensity and the counterattack appeared to balance again a duel that went to rest under the sign of maximum equality (13-13).

numerical inferiority

Going through the locker room felt better to Spaniards than French. The Hispanics redoubled their offensive power, with the brilliant multipurpose Álex Dujshebaev as a game generator, and in a flash the game had turned red (19-16). In a duel that was already much more fluid than in the first half hour, a situation that was the result of relaxation between two classified teams, the advantage was small and slipped away as suddenly as it had come.

The duel, which entered tied (24-24) in the last ten minutes, had definitely raised his heart rate, in a good test before the decisive stretch of the World Cup, now without a net. The Macedonians Nachevski and Nikolov severely punished the defensive hardness of Spain, which paid for its numerical inferiorities in the final stretch. Maqueda’s mistake in a poorly executed substitution and the exclusion of the Toledo winger definitively buried Spain’s options, which got stuck before Vincent Gerard’s saves and twisted his arm after a 2-4 final run.