In search of a new Olympic title in a few months, the French team is preparing for the Euro handball tournament.
French handball players, reigning Olympic champions and unfortunate finalists of the 2023 world championship, are among the favorites for the European coronation. The Karabatic brothers will be present, and Nikola should thus experience his penultimate international competition in the tricolor jersey, before his scheduled farewell to the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. For this competition, there will be no Vincent Gérard. Despite his pre-selection, the historic goalkeeper of the Blues has not yet played again and would have been too tight for such a competition.
In the preliminary round, France will first face North Macedonia and Switzerland, two a priori affordable opponents, before facing Germany, host country of the competition and 5th in the last world championships. The Blues should manage to reach the main round, where they will find Spain, finalist of Euro 2022 and third in the 2023 world championship. The other favorites are Denmark, recent world champion, and Sweden, European champion in title, as well as Norway which could play spoilsport.
For the boss of French handball, Phillipe Bana, the Blues must wear the “costume of favorites”. I no longer set a goal,” assured Philippe Bana. “At a certain time, we told them that it would not be bad to win a bronze medal, to be in the last four of the competition. From now on, if we say that to one of the two coaches of the French teams, they tell us that they are going there to win and only to win, otherwise they stay at home” he explained on France Info on Sunday January 7 .
As usual, beIN Sports will broadcast the entire competition while the TFX group will broadcast a few matches such as France – Germany on January 16.
Group A:
Group B:
Group C:
Group D:
Group E:
Group F:
The men’s handball Euro will be played in 2024, from January 10 to 28 precisely.
The next European Handball Championship will take place in Germany. It will be the first, since the competition format expanded to 24 nations, to be contested in a single country. Six cities will help host the event: Dusseldorf, Berlin, Mannheim and Munich are the sites for the preliminary round, and Hamburg and Cologne are the destinations for the main round.
For this Euro in Germany, Guillaume Gille has selected a group of 20 players:
