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Nikola Karabatic from handball Olympic champion France is held by two Croatian players
Photo: Tibor Illyes / dpa
Olympic champion
France
won the first top game of the handball championship in Hungary and Slovakia after a heated 60 minutes.
The record world champion around top star Nikola Karabatic started the final round with a hard-fought 27:22 (13:11) against vice-European champion
Croatia
.
Things got hot, especially after the break.
The former Melsunger David Mandic even saw the blue card after a foul, which, in contrast to the red card, initiates disciplinary proceedings.
Particularly serious fouls or unsportsmanlike behavior are punished with a blue card.
The Croatian can therefore be banned for further games.
In the second game of group C, Serbia clearly won 31:23 (17:11) against Ukraine in Szeged.
World champion
Denmark
started the tournament with a sovereign 30:21 (18:10) against
Montenegro
.
In the other game in Group A,
Slovenia
, semi-finalists from 2020,
narrowly won 27:25 (13:10) against
North Macedonia in Debrecen.
Vice World Champion
Sweden
had little trouble
in the 30:18 (17:11) against
Bosnia-Herzegovina .
Also in Group E, defending champions
Spain
had to tremble for a long time.
The European champion of 2018 and 2020 prevailed against the
Czech Republic
in Bratislava after a long fight with 28:26 (14:11) - until three minutes before the end the encounter was still completely open.
Co-hosts
Hungary
got off to a bad start against the
Netherlands
.
Despite the loud support of their fans, the highly rated Hungarians did not get better than 28:31 (10:13) against the outsider Netherlands.
ok/sid
