The French team took a big step towards the quarter-finals by outclassing Austria on Wednesday evening. But two matches remain to be played before the knockout phase.
After their solid success in the preliminary round, with three matches won against Angola (30-29), Iceland (31-22) and Slovenia (31-27), the Blues started the main round perfectly by beating Austria with a river score (41-27). The French team played its offensive game against an opponent who was far too tender in defense, powerless in the face of the speed of the ball and the French restarts. With 25 goals scored at the break, the fate of the match was already sealed (25-14). The French continued to be precise in shooting and diligent in running the game, to win by a large margin and confirm their progress in this World Cup.
If qualification is not yet mathematically assured, the match against South Korea, Friday at 6:00 p.m., should look like a formality to secure a ticket for the quarter-finals. Then a group “final” will take place on Sunday against the world champions, Norway, without any major issues since the first two are qualified. But Chloé Valentini, winger of the Bleues, is focused on the next match against the South Koreans, and wants to do even better than Wednesday evening: “Without denigrating anyone, conceding 27 goals against Austria is still a lot. The competition is progressing, we are going to face tougher and tougher opponents and we have to be extremely demanding of ourselves on defense.”
When will the World Handball Championships take place?
The handball world championship takes place from November 29 to December 17, 2023.
For these world championships, Denmark, Norway and Sweden have been designated as the organizers of the competition.
The competition will be broadcast on the channels of the beIN Sports group, which will broadcast all the matches of the French team and a selection of the best posters. The TMC channel will also broadcast all Les Bleues matches in unencrypted form.