Group E joins EHF EURO party; crunch time in Herning
Men's EHF EURO 2026 group E throws off on Saturday with the world runners-up Croatia pitting sides with Georgia. Co-hosts and EHF EURO 2022 winners Sweden take on the Netherlands, the same opponents they edged in a narrow win in the group phase at the EHF EURO 2024.
If Germany and Spain win their respective matches against Serbia and Austria in group A in Herning, both have already booked their main round tickets. Meanwhile France and Norway can also secure their main round berths if they beat Ukraine and Czechia respectively in group C.
We can do much, much better everywhere on the court in attack, in defence and make more saves and the efficiency in the shot. Now we need to be perfect and to start winning against Germany. This game will be like a final for us.
Ukraine have a much bigger motivation than just handball, of course, representing your country when it is under attack is something else. What Ukraine is going through, on the ground, is horrible. But we have to focus on ourselves, and on the game. There is not much we can do to help them, sadly. They are a very young team, that fights a lot. But I am sure that if we play with respect, we should have the upper hand.
They play really fast, they have really good players. I think that we have to remain in the game for as long as possible if we want to upset them. That was the plan against France as well, but we did not manage to do it. If you lose by six right away, it’s hard to come back. We have to be better in this part of the game.
Croatia is the strongest team, with a great handball history. Always one of the favorites. If our guys cope with the tasks, I think they will not have an easy game. We want to fight with dignity and leave our word at this championship.
We can be nervous in those first games, we are like a diesel engine. We should not underestimate anyone, this is EHF EURO and all teams are here with a reason. And we do remember our defeat against Eygpt three years ago and how much one defeat can derail everything. I hope we will start with the win.
It is so important to live here and now, take one game at the time, and focus on that. Because if you start to think about another game when you play against the Netherlands, for sure it's not two points.
We will continue playing our game. I think it's attractive handball that we are playing. We do make some unnecessary technical faults, but we continue to impose our thing. So everybody needs to be ready to run when they are playing against us.
