Today the 2009 World Men’s Handball Championship starts. It is hosted by Croatia and will end on the 1st February 2009. So we will get a bit more coverage of handball on the TV as well as on news websites.

My favourite teams are France (current Olympic Champion), Germany (current World Champion), Denmark (current European Champion) and of course Norway. Sadly, I am missing the team of Iceland, which didn’t qualify during the European play-offs.

Well, there will be certainly highly exciting matches and I am certainly looking forward to watch some on TV. Sadly, the German TV broadcaster for all matches with the German team is RTL, which is not available via Zatoo, so I either have to move the TV to my computer room or try and use their web livestream. Some other matches are shown by DSF, which is available via Zatoo on my laptop.

I hope at least a client’s server will stay up during the WC and will not face the same fate as in 2007, when the server crashed due to heavy load and emergency works had to be done throughout the nights.

More webcoverage of the World Championship:

• www.dhb.de
• www.handball-magazin.com
• www.croatia2009.com

So, let’s now hope corruption and doping don’t show their ugly face during the WC.

The Norwegian ladies won over the Spanish team with a stunning 34:21 and are the gold champions of the EURO 2008. Yeah!

Germany sadly lost its (re)match versus Russia for the bronze medal with 21:24. Well, I had expected a bit more, but nevertheless the German handball women now are one of the best teams in Europe.

Norway beat Russia with 24:18 and is now facing Spain in the finals tomorrow. Russia has again to face Germany, now it will be the decision who wins the bronze medal. Hopefully Germany.

All the best to Norge!

Gratulations to the Spanish women! They defeated the German women handball team with 33:29 in a hot and fiercely fought match. Too many errors on the German side resulted in Germany only playing in the “small” finale (places 3 and 4).

So Spain is now in the finals. Today afternoon it will be decided if Norway or Russia will face the Spanish team now.

Norway won against Romania yesterday evening: 37:31. So now Norway meets Russia and Germany meets Spain in the semi finals. My bet of Norway versus Germany in the finals is still valid.

Which also brings me into a bit of a dilemma, which team should I support? The country where I hail from or the country where I might want to live in?

The German handball women just won their match against world champion Russia with 27:22.

It has been a nice match to watch.

So, we now have to wait how Olympic gold team Norway fares against Romania. One of them will be Germany’s opponent in the semifinals.

Wikipedia got a nice overview of the tournament:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_European_Women%27s_Handball_Championship

28:28… well, with a lot of luck the German women were able to get to a draw in their match against Belarus yesterday. Now the German team got the same points as Russia, both have 7 points but Russia got the better goal ratio. A victory today against Russia is now more than useful.

In Group I, the women’s team of Norway is at the top with 7 points, followed by Romania with 6 points.

Norge, Norge!

The Swedish handball team got steamrolled yesterday evening in a furious match by the German ladies with 33:22. It quite astounding because the Swedish ladies won against our team at the Olympics in Beijing, so I thought the match would be a lot closer.

After this win, the German women are already set for the semi finales this Saturday. Gogogo!

After the victories in the preliminary round against FYR Macedonia, Serbia and Croatia, the German women reached the main round. YEAH!

Results of the preliminary round:

Germany vs FYR Macedonia 25:22
Serbia vs Germany 31:32
Germany vs Croatia 32:27

BTW, the French women didn’t make it to the main round.

Germany (4pts) finds itself at the top of Group II of the main round among Russia (3pts), Sweden (2pts), FYR Macedonia (2pts), Belarus (1pt) and Croatia (0).

Group I consists of Romania (4pts), Norway (3pts), Spain (2pts), Denmark, Hungary and Ukraine (all 1pt).

Germany meets the Swedish team tonight. I hope it’s a nice and interesting game.

In the end, I would like to see a final between Norway and Germany.

More links:

Coverage of the EURO 2008 on the DHB website

Women’s section on the EHF site