Jorge Maqueda of Spain celebrates during the Qatar 2015 24th Men’s Handball World Championship match between Spain and Chile at the Duhail Handball Sports Hall, Doha.

 

By Yash Mudgal/Doha


Defending champions Spain gave a short shrift to Chile (37-16) to clinch its third consecutive victory and rolled into the pre-quarter-finals of the 24th Men’s Handball World Championship at Lusail Multipurpose Arena yesterday.
The Chileans, who qualified for the championship in dramatic fashion scoring in the penultimate second against Uruguay in their match for the qualification place, did not have any chance against the sensational Spanish defence.
Chile pivot Marco Oneto admitted his side’s shortcomings as he said: “It was a great game for Spain. Very difficult to say what went wrong for us... We played like kids and let the opponents do what they wanted. Spain clearly showed us we’ve got problems.”
The Spaniards, who scored victories over Brazil and Belarus in their first two Group A matches, punished every Chilean mistake in attack by counter-attacks and highly efficient shots from the back court area.
“This game was played differently in the first and the second half. In the first period we demonstrated good defence and in the second we attacked well. We achieved an impressive goal adifference,” Spain coach Manuel Cagenas said.
“We have qualified and now we will be concentrating on further stages of the tournament,” he said.
However, the Chileans opened the score in the fifth minute showing all signs of being the enthusiastic dark horses. It took the Spanish armada almost two minutes to pull one back.
After that Spain decided to accelerate a little bit and took a confident lead.
Chile was not showing signs of bowing under pressure as until the last 10 minutes of the first-half  the defending champions advantage was only more than three points. The Chileans demonstrated good strategies in both attack and defence to cope with the challenge reasonably well.
Still the Spanish were gradually increasing their lead in the second-half, doing it quite confidently without putting any extra visible efforts into it.
The tempo of the game dropped significantly in the second-half and it looked like the Chileans were trying to keep the goal difference to single figures but the European side increased the lead to more than 20 points.
Spain’s top scorer was Valero Rivera with seven goals in eight attempts while Guillermo Arraya and Javier Frelijj were the joint top scorers for Chile with three goals apiece.

BRAZIL Beat BELARUS 34 -29
In an encounter between two teams who were in desperate need of points, Brazil defeated Belarus 34-29 to secure its first victory in the championship.
It was the day of the Brazilian wingers Fabio Chiuffa, Felipe Ribeiro and Lucas Candido together scored 17 goals – half of the Brazilian total in the match.
“We knew in advance how important that match would be after we had lost our first two matches. Therefore I am very happy with our first two points in the tournament. We knew after our defeats in our first two matches, that we were in for four ‘finals’ about going on in the tournament. Now we have won the first of those finals,” Brazil coach Jordi Ribera said.
Both teams opened with scoring problems, and it took more than three minutes before Belarusian right wing Dzianis Rutenka scored the first goal of the match.
However, after Belarus took the lead at the beginning, Brazil had the upper hand for most of the first half. Their aggressive defence obviously bothered the Belarusians, and so did the fast and elegant right wing Fabio Chiuffa at the other end of the court.
In the first-half itself he scored five goals – from the wing, on counter attacks and on penalty shots, before spending the first 20 minutes of the second-half on the bench.
Chiuffa’s teammate on the opposite wing, Felipe Ribeiro, also scored five goals in the first-half, and with nine goals in total became Brazil’s top scoring player.
Brazil soon got up by three goals, and that lead was even increased to five before being back to four again after the first 30 minutes, at which point Brazil were leading 16-12.
Even while having two players less on the court at the beginning of the second-half, the Brazilians managed to score, and after they regained full strength, they went back to increasing their lead which was at six when it was it highest.