Summary: 24 teams prepare to throw off Women's EHF EURO
It's the day before the Women's EHF EURO 2024 throws off, and in Austria, Hungary and Switzerland 24 teams are getting ready for the biggest European women's handball championship in history.
Make sure you're ready to catch the spirit of the tournament with today's build-up live blog!
We are a young team, so maybe we want to surprise because we are very good. We are confident enough to try to face the big teams, so we will try to do our best and of course we want some points maybe to go to the main round.
The Netherlands are fast, very fast. All players are playing in very good teams as pro handball players, and they have built up a good culture around the team. They have been doing very good in the last few years and tournaments. We are definitely the small team there, but you never know how a handball match is going to play out and we will definitely do our best. There's nothing that says we can't surprise.
We know that we need four points to go to Vienna, this is our big dream, so we know that we need the first two points against Slovakia. This is it. We've focused totally for a long time now on this big tournament and it will be very important to start good into the game, and also have the fans at our back and play with self-confidence. We play at home, this is our hall, and we need the two points in the first game.
I feel like we have a lot of different strengths in the many players. That's the biggest strength, we can play a lot of different plays based on who is on the pitch for every time. What I'm most excited about is to see how this group can develop during the tournament. That's a strength we have had many years now as a team, and it's still a strength.