Serbia (SRB)

Serbia have made it to the Women’s EHF EURO for the ninth time in a row, with their best result being the semi-finals and fourth place in 2012, when they hosted the competition. Since then, in the next five editions, they have only made the main round twice, exiting in the preliminary round three times.

In fact, Serbia have won only one of their last six matches, finishing 13th in 2020 and 15th in 2022 and conceding 88 goals in each of the last two editions of the competition. The drop in form can be attributed to a change of generations, which saw experienced players such as Andrea Lekic and Dragana Cvijic retiring from international handball.

Over the past years, coach Uroš Bregar, appointed in 2021, has been trying to steady the ship. However, in the last major international competition, the 2023 IHF Women’s World Championship, Serbia finished 21st with only one win in six matches, dropping games against Romania, Denmark, Poland and Germany. Therefore, without any big comeback of an experienced player in their squad, Serbia will have to rely once again on a younger core, with only three players aged 30 or older named in the provisional 35-player squad sent before the EHF EURO 2024.

In the EHF EURO 2024 Qualifiers, Serbia had a mixed bag of results, finishing second in their group. However, they suffered two losses against Montenegro, 30:31 and 25:26, and drew 29:29 with Türkiye, which dimmed their hopes of a better placement. Nevertheless, Serbia looked to have learnt something from those matches and will be looking to improve on their results, as group B in Debrecen looks open to any result, with four level teams ready to battle for the top two spots in the group.