The French handball team is incredible.
This Wednesday evening, in the last group match of the Euro in Hungary, the Blues should not lose against Denmark to go to the semi-finals.
For 50 minutes they looked lost, helpless, relegated five goals behind the world champions for too long.
And then, 10 minutes from the end, the Olympic champions made up for their delay, little by little before winning by one goal.
This victory, in view of the scenario of the match, represents a small miracle.
Winner 30-29, France will face Sweden on Friday at 8:30 p.m. in Budapest, in the semi-final of the Euro: “It was really mental, rejoices Nikola Karabatic at the microphone of beIN Sports.
We had a very bad start, everything was going well for them, and for us everything was going wrong.
At half-time, we told ourselves that we had thirty minutes to regret nothing.
We had to continue to have confidence in ourselves and in what we were doing.
That's what we managed and we fought hard until the end.
We believed it.
Success turned around, they began to doubt and that's where we were good.
We scored the goals at the end.
It's a big comeback and it's an important victory for us.
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🤩 IT'S TER-MI-BORN!!!!
🇩🇰 29-30 🇫🇷
What an incredible end to the game for our BLUES who snatched victory and qualification after a second half full of twists and turns 🔥🔥🔥
THE BLUES DID IT!
THE BLUES ARE IN THE SEMI-FINALS 💙🤍❤️#BleuetFier pic.twitter.com/Aj5CGb3Plk
– French Handball Teams (@FRAHandball) January 26, 2022
The captain of the Blues, who is setting out to conquer a fourth European title, which would be a record in this area tied with four Swedish players from the 1990s, continues, still at the microphone of beIN Sports: "Since the start of this Euro-Covid, we have different news every day, cases, today it was Nicolas Tournat (positive for the virus).
We went through all the states: in the first round everything was going well, it was euphoria, behind we received a big correction against Iceland, we raised our heads against Montenegro.
And today we could have given up, stopped playing.
But we continued and it was really a mentally very strong half.
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"We screwed up against Iceland"
The captain of the Blues, Valentin Porte, does not hide either that in the Hungarian evening, he went through all the emotions: “It's huge!
loose the boss of the Blues and Montpellier.
We were a little caught up in what was at stake at the start of the match, we completely missed our start, especially in defense we took on water and we had nothing to reassure ourselves.
But we learn from our mistakes, behind we didn't give up.
We stayed at -5 for a long time but we always believed in it and in the end we were rewarded.
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[📺LIVE] 🏆🤾♂️ Handball Euro
🇩🇰🇫🇷 Vincent Gérard: "What a story, what selflessness!"#DANFRA pic.twitter.com/tQZClxq4d9
— beIN SPORTS (@beinsports_FR) January 26, 2022
A miracle never comes alone, France finished first in their group whereas 10 minutes earlier, they had been eliminated: “Not only do we win, continues Porte, but we finish first in the group.
So I feel like something was born tonight.
Really a big shout out to the whole team.
Since December 26 (Editor’s note: date of the start of the preparation), we have been there and it is very complicated, we trained at twelve, we did not know who was going to participate, the Covid, not the Covid, injured , no injuries.
Many saw us losing quickly, but we always believed in it.
We said things to each other from the start and tonight we proved it.
Now it's not over, it's the first objective that has been achieved, which was to qualify for the last four.
Now we're going to try to run over everyone!
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Replacing Guillaume Gille, still positive for Covid, Érick Mathé, the assistant coach, is also jubilant!
“We didn't want to relive the Iceland match (29-21 defeat).
The energy was reversed, the goalkeepers in need of stops did the right thing in the last ten minutes.
This result validates everything we do.
We screwed up against Iceland and we didn't want to do that twice.
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