Qatar players celebrate their 29-27 win over Austria in the 24th Men’s Handball World Championship pre-quarterfinal match at Lusail Multipurpose Arena yesterday. PICTURE: Anas Khalid
By Yash Mudgal/Doha
Hosts Qatar delivered a fantastic performance to defeat Austria 29-27 and enter quarter-finals of the 24th Men’s Handball World Championship yesterday.
At Lusail Multipurpose Arena, the hosts, actively encouraged by their singing and dancing fans, overcame Austria in a keenly fought game for their maiden entry in quarterfinals. Qatar is the second Asian team to reach quarter-final stage after South Korea in 1997.
The hosts will take on the winner of the January 28 pre-quarter-final match between Germany and Egypt.
Qatar coach Valero Rivera was delighted with his team’s performance as he applauded his boys and supporters for the victory.
“I am very happy with the victory. This is the first time Qatar has entered the last eight stage. I would like to thank all the supporters who were in the hall today. This is very important for the players, for the coaching team, for the federation who has worked a lot for this, and for the country,” Rivera said.
Both the sides were quite inexperienced for this phase of the tournament and it was evident in the initial phase of the game as they missed too many chances to score and lost too many balls.
This was only the second time that the hosts had qualified for the pre-quarter-finals, having playing an almost perfect preliminary round to claim second spot in Group A.
The last time Qatar made it past the first round was at the 2003 World Championship in Portugal, which was also their debut. The side had finished 16th in the final ranking then.
In the preliminary round of this year’s tournament, Qatar had played consistently well, winning by several goals in most of their matches. Their only downfall was against defending champions Spain to whom they lost by only three goals.
It had been a while since Austria found themselves in the pre-quarter-finals as well – indeed they have only qualified for the world championship intermittently.
Qatar had a slight upper hand in the beginning of the match, mainly due to a nervous Austrian attack. Austria had sufficient opportunities to take the lead in the beginning, but missed them.
Yet, a 5-1 Austrian defence, with line player Markus Wagesreiter pushing forward, seemed to irritate the Qatari offence.
This gave Austria their first lead at 5-4, but the Austrians were still missing too many opportunities, and even though Qatar also missed quite a lot of attempts, they managed to take back their two-goal lead in a jiffy.
Twenty minutes into the first half, Austria changed their defence tactics, pushing centre back Vytautas Ziura forward on the left side of their defence in an attempt to control Qatar’s right back Zarko Markovic, who had scored five goals till then. The tactic worked for the visitors as Markovic failed to score for the rest of the first half.
Austria even managed to stay level for over 100 seconds despite being a player down on the court, and then took at 14-13 lead into the break.
At the start of the second half, the hosts again managed take a two-goal lead and maintained it till the end.
Markovic scored eight goals for Qatar and now has a total of 49 goals to his credit in the championship. Austria’s right wing Robert Weber also scored eight goals.
“It was a very good win for Qatar handball. We have once again proved that we are capable of beating any side,” said Markovic, the stand-out player for the hosts. “We are all proud of what we achieved today. It’s a victory that will always be remembered. We had our problems in the initial phase of the match but hopefully we will overcome that in the next match.”
Talking about their quarter-final opponent he said, “All the teams are same for me as far as playing against them is concerned. We are ready for both Germany and Egypt,” he said.
Borja Vidal, who was a replacement for Abdulrazzaq Murad in the team, scored two goals in two attempts.
“I had injuries earlier. But I came back for this match and we won. Now we’re in the quarter-finals. I’m very happy for the coach, teammates and staff that worked with us. I’m proud to be part of this history-making team. We’re very happy. It’s really an amazing day for all of us. We played very hard and finally came on the top,” the 33- year-old pivot said.
“For the entire 60 minutes, we fought and just fought hard. The match was very close and could have gone either way. Finally, the better side won. Our belief and team work helped and we won an important match. This is a stage when all the teams will be very difficult. Any team that comes in the quarter-final against us, it’s same for us. We’ll have to play hard and well for the entire game. Hopefully, we’ll be able to take another step forward,” he said.
Qatar goalkeepers Danijel Saric and Goran Stojanovic were once again in top form as they saved 10 goals.
Austria left wing Raul Santos summed up the game by saying, “You win a game in defence and you lose a game in defence and Qatar do not have run-of-the-mill goalkeepers, they are very strong.”