Les Bleues play their second match in this world handball championship this Saturday, and must live up to their status as favorites.
After their very sluggish start against Angola on Thursday (30-29), the Blues face Iceland this Saturday, for their second match in this preliminary round of the world handball championship. For its part, Iceland lost its first match against Slovenia (24-30). In the event of victory, the French would already validate their qualification for the main round, where they will meet the teams from group C, and therefore certainly the Norwegian world champions.
Before getting to the heart of the matter, this match must serve as a dress rehearsal, after a not really reassuring victory against Angola in the opening (30-29). Jostled, clumsy and saved from the equalizer by their post at the last second, the Blues came close to a major poor performance, and will be keen to react and show a better face this Saturday. It will first be necessary to correct the address in front of goal: seven missed shots on the counter-attack and two missed penalties. Also worth reviewing: a 1-5 defense that was too fragile, which was quickly reworked into 0-6. Finally, some disappointing individuals, like goalkeeper Laura Glauser, replaced after 15 minutes.
The coach of the French team, Olivier Krumbholz, himself expressed his dissatisfaction after the match against Angola: “We played badly, that’s for sure. The problem comes neither from the goalkeeper nor from the defense . We panicked in attack, we froze, mentally tense. Playing like that, there is no escape.” Tamar Horacek, scorer of the winning goal, expressed relief after the match: “Pfff… I wanted to scream, to smile, but I was aware that we hadn’t played the match we had. we wanted. It was complicated. But we got through it, the World Cup is on now.” And, this Saturday against Iceland, we will finally have to find the right mechanisms to start a machine which must not stop before the final.
France – Iceland will kick off this Saturday, December 2 at 6:00 p.m. at the DNB Arena in Stavanger, Norway.
The match will be followed on the channels of beIN Sports, official broadcaster of the competition, on the beIN Sports 3 TV channel.
