Denmark beat Qatar 41-27 in World Championship

Agencies/Sevilla

Denmark had no problems in beating the 2015 World Championship hosts Qatar 41-27 in the Men’s World Handball Championship here yesterday.

The 2012 European Champion played highly concentrated in the first 22 minutes and went away pre-decisively to 15:6. But the Qatar team improved in defence and consequently reduced the gap to intermediately only five goals. But still the Asian runners-up could not endanger the Danes, who were in clear physical advantages even as they saved the powers of the lightly injured 2011 World Handball Player Mikkel Hansen.

Right after the break the Qataris again stood strong, but lost powers and concentration against the fast and powerful Danish team, which extended the gap easily to ten goals for the first time at 29:19 in minute 42.

From that moment on, Danish coach Ulrik Wilbek rotated his full squad without losing speed or power, while the Qatari batteries went empty. By a wave of counter attacks the European champion added a huge number of goals to their tally.  Right wing Hans Lindberg was the one to score the 40th Danish goal 90 seconds before the end.

Top scorers were Anders Eggert and Hans Lindberg with eight goals each for Denmark. Ahmed Abdelhak scored four times for Qatar.

“Our hopes to beat Denmark were not that high before the match, but we tried to fight. We made a little too many mistakes in attack, but I am satisfied with our defence. Now we start preparing for the match against FYR Macedonia in which we hopefully have more chances,” said Qatar coach Borut Macek. Denmark coach Ulrik Wilbe speaking about the win said, “Though we made some mistakes in defence I am satisfied with our speed in attack. We have improved our counter-attacks, which was our main goal after the Olympic Games.  Against Russia we need to improve in defence if we want to take this important victory.”

In the group D action, Hungary defeated Egypt 32-23. During the whole first 30 minutes the team of Lajos Mocsai was dominant and fully awake. The logical consequence was the 17:9 lead at the break. The African bronze medallist needed a lot of time to come into this match, but during the second half things went better for the Egyptians. Because of that – and because Hungary decelerated due to the clear lead – Egypt came closer to 21:26 after 52 minutes. But that was all the Hungarians allowed. During the final period the Olympic semi-finalist again played more concentrated and won well deserved. Best player was Gabor Csaszar, who scored eight times for Hungary.

After Slovenia and Serbia had won their openers in preliminary group C it was up to Poland to win in the last match of the first day in Zaragoza. They defeated Belarus 24-22.

Right from the start Poland players showed a very strong performance to lead 9:4 after twelve minutes. After that starting period Belarussian coach Youri Chevtsov was forced to take the first time out to stabilise the way his team was playing. With modest success: Though Poland missed a lot of clear chances they nevertheless made it to a five-goal-lead (14:9) after the first half.