2011–12 EHF Champions League http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011–12_EHF_Champions_League Quarterfinals The draw was held on 27 March 2012 at 11:30 local time in Vienna. The first legs will be played on 18–22 April, and the second legs will be played on 25–29 April 2012. Team #1 Agg. Team #2 1st match 2nd match AG København Denmark – FC Barcelona Spain 29–23 28 April CB Ademar León Spain – Füchse Berlin Germany 21 April 29 April RK Zagreb Croatia – THW Kiel Germany 21 April 29 April RK Cimos Koper Slovenia – Atlético Madrid Spain 21 April 28 April EHF Champions League Winners: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EHF_Champions_League Official Website: http://www.ehfcl.com/
The results of quarterfinals: Team #1 Agg. Team #2 1st match 2nd match AG København – FC Barcelona 29–23 28 April CB Ademar León – Füchse Berlin 34–23 29 April RK Zagreb – THW Kiel 31–31 29 April RK Cimos Koper – Atlético Madrid 26–23 28 April RK Zagreb – THW Kiel 31–31 [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP3vGLh10R4"]RK CO Zagreb-THW Kiel 1/4 finale Lige prvaka-najava - YouTube[/ame]
Team #1 Agg. Team #2 1st match 2nd match AG København 62–59 FC Barcelona 29–23 33–36 CB Ademar León – Füchse Berlin 34–23 29 April RK Zagreb – THW Kiel 31–31 29 April RK Cimos Koper 50–54 Atlético Madrid 26–23 24–31 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011–12_EHF_Champions_League [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LczguuCVMU&feature=player_embedded"]Angry Jicha bombing - Fantastic gooal - YouTube[/ame] [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX9UU7rbkq0&feature=player_embedded"]RK CO Zagreb-THW Kiel-1/4 finale Lige prvaka 21.04.2012. - YouTube[/ame] The semifinals will be played here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanxess_Arena http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Köln_deutz_kölnarena.jpg
Matches Team #1 Agg. Team #2 1st match 2nd match AG København 62–59 FC Barcelona 29–23 33–36 CB Ademar León 52–52 Füchse Berlin 34–23 18–29 RK Zagreb 58–64 THW Kiel 31–31 27–33 RK Cimos Koper 50–54 Atlético Madrid 26–23 24–31 Final four The semifinals will be played on 26 May 2012. The third place game and the final will be played on 27 May 2012 in the Lanxess Arena at Cologne, Germany. Qualified teams AG København Füchse Berlin THW Kiel Atlético Madrid
Handball at the 2012 Summer Olympics – Women's qualification http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handball_at_the_2012_Summer_Olympics_–_Women's_qualification Six more participants got their tickets for Summer Olympics 2012: Croatia, Spain, Montenegro, France, Russia and Denmark.
Handball - Olympic Games 2012, London. Referees: http://www.ihf.info/IHFCompetitions...s/NewsDetails/tabid/5921/Default.aspx?ID=1007 Qualified teams: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handball_at_the_2012_Summer_Olympics Website: http://www.london2012.com/handball/ Handball World Cup 2013 - Spain. 11.-27. January 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_World_Men's_Handball_Championship Croatia is playing against Spain, Hungary, Algeria, Egypt and Australia. Spain is carrier because they are hosts, we won against them on last EURO, third place match. They are great team. Hungary can be unpleasant, but they are weaker than Croatia. Algeria, Egypt and Australia should be the weakest teams.
40 years passed since the first gold Handball Olympic medal in 1972. This Yugoslav team was special because they had many Croats. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handball_at_the_1972_Summer_Olympics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslavia_national_handball_team Coach: Vlado Štencl - Croat Abaz Arslanagić - Bosnian Muslim Petar Fajfrić - Serb Hrvoje Horvat - Croat Milorad Karalić - Bosnian Serb Đorđe Lavrnić - Serb Milan Lazarević - Serb Zdravko Miljak - Croat Slobodan Mišković - Serb Branislav Pokrajac - Serb Nebojša Popović - Bosnian Serb Miroslav Pribanić - Croat Albin Vidović - Croat Zoran Živković - Serb Zdenko Zorko - Croat Croatian participants (108) had a flight today to London. So they mentioned this jubilee as something nice to remember.
Glad I caught this thread. Handball is one of the Olympic sports I always try to catch. Used to play it in college: it was a popular intramural sport and Physical Ed class at my university because one of the football coaches learned the game when he was stationed in Europe w/ the US Army. I am surprised it's not more popular in the US.
In Europe, handball is more popular, but handball has its attractions, unity, battles in defense, fast attacks, combinations. USA could have a good team, its not hard to find there players who are high, strong and fast. Here are the rules, for those who are not familiar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_handball In the bottom you have countries with handball league, USA included. Handball Champions League exists same as football Champions League. Current best teams in the world are: Spain, Iceland, France, Denmark and Croatia. Enjoy watching handball in London.
Can I assume incorrectly that American basketball players would be the best equivalent athletes for this sport? My only gripe against Team Handball is that it is a little too easy to score goals. All they gotta do is throw it at the goal. They should make the goal even smaller!
Basketball is also popular in Europe, NBA also, but not so much like in 90s I think. In Europe people dont like statistics to much. I dont think that its easy to score, you need to have really strong punches, that space between the oval line and goal is also wide. On TV it looks easy. Havent tried to play handball, maybe several times in the school gym before. Handball became much faster than before, there are some really nice crossings, goals from the left or right wing, also you have the battle on the line, usually one player goes there and he gets a lot of punches and body checks. Players get to much punches, but its not popular to object on injuries, if you get punches, only thing that you can do is to return back. Handball players dont act so much as footballers. I dont think so that the handball is a first option for todays handballers, many of them probably tried other sports. For example, best handballer in history of handball, Croat Ivano Balic, likes to say, that he likes basketball more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivano_Balić Probably he could not get better moments in basketball, so he plays handball now. Some types of punches, todays match between Tunisia and Croatia (blue uniforms): Tunisia plays ruff handball. Many players are very tall and have weight, so when they hit someone smaller and weaker, its considered that this "meeting" is something like hitting the wall. There are a lot of intentional fouls, but mostly they are fair. France - Spain, also today. Sad moments after last second goal, Spanish team lost in the last 2,3 seconds. Semifinals: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handball_at_the_2012_Summer_Olympics_–_Men's_tournament Hungary - SwedenFrance - Croatia I think that handball and waterpolo have some similarities. They are popular in around 10, 15 countries. Maybe 5,6 teams decides about the medals. Mostly popular in Europe.Maybe those sports will become more popular outside of Europe. Handball is popular in Southern Korea, Argentina. Waterpolo is popular in USA and Australia. Handball was slower before, long attacks, today its much faster. Bad thing about the handball is that referees dont have the same criteria, bad decisions happen. Many negative reactions players have during and after the match because of those bad decisions. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybmikQhDg98&feature=fvwrel Rivalry between the best players is also strong. Countries that dont like each other demonstrate hatred, insults, etc. After the match Serbian fans followed Croatian fans in their cars and attacked them with axes. This EURO 2012 was held in Serbia. Small group of our fans went there and they were attacked.Handball has interesting moments, but I think that its not always interesting: pass, pass, pass and hit the ball. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y93lldjlXpg
France qualified for the final... again, by delivering an outstanding performance against a great, great Croatian team. They will face Sweden in the final. Goalkeeper Thierry Omeyer in particular was immense, as was Didier Dinart in defense. That team is quite simply the greatest ever and has been so for four years now. Another Olympic victory will make it even more obvious.
Handball tournament finished, great presentation of all three team who won the medals: France, Sweden and Croatia. Handball improved a lot, there was a lot of words about this tournament and positive comments. Review: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handball_at_the_2012_Summer_Olympics_–_Men's_tournament
It's a great sport and I also wonder why it's not that popular in the U.S. because it's physical, fast, "high" scoring, small fielded arenas. Maybe it's because there is no big tradition in other English speaking countries so the English coverage is more or less nonexistent. It's a great sport anyway. The best quality league is the German Bundesliga if you want to follow the sport on a regular basis.
With German Bundesliga, you can follow new upcoming season of EHF Champions League 2012./2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012–13_EHF_Champions_League We will see another season of great and interesting matches. In my personal opinion, best clubs here are: Group A: Montpellier HB, SG Flensburg, CD Ademar Leon, Hamburg. Group B: THW Kiel, Atletico Madrid, Celje Pivovarna Lasko. Group C: here we have something interesting and sad also, Danish club AG Kobenhavn filed for banruptcy, they were in this group. They would be very strong. This group has similar strength, cant decide who are the best clubs. Group D: Barcelona, RK Zagreb Croatia and Berlin Fuchse. Your opinions are welcommed here.
In case some people are not yet aware, in the US, the channel BeIN Sport is showing games and a weekly highlight show of the EHF Champions League. Great news!
Some clubs don't have results like I thought that they would have: Group A: Ademar Leon and Montpellier. Group B: Atletico Madrid, Celje Pivovarna Lasko. Group C: - Group D: Zagreb. Other teams play on a normal level.
It's not popular in America because it is unknown here and we already have Basketball, which is basically our own Handball.
Got kind of interested whilst handball was on at the Olympics, after the Bill Simmons article on Grantland. When I looked into it, I was amazed that there were so many leagues. When I'm next in Europe I will definitely try and go and see a game or two (mainland Europe seems to cater for sports better than other parts of Europe). Anyhow my somewhat crude numbers on the Bundesliga Mens division from the start of this week (I think they are reasonable but not great). I have home advantage being worth about 0.6(ish) goals. TEAM RATING OFFENCE DEFENCEBalingen/W -2.58271762 -1.38212603 1.20059159Essen -7.83291204 -3.62464598 4.20826606Flensburg-Handewitt 6.25514203 3.26479774 -2.99034430Fuchse Berlin 1.23507642 -1.65249883 -2.88757525Goppingen -0.61150579 -0.87391985 -0.26241406Großwallstadt -2.13808206 -3.04364275 -0.90556069Gummersbach -2.57612927 0.07707756 2.65320684H.-Burgdorf 0.47745831 1.19888006 0.72142175HSV 2.37794894 1.15635750 -1.22159144Kiel 6.61909649 5.10581124 -1.51328525Lemgo -1.33190173 0.00419513 1.33609686Magdeburg 1.46945090 1.45355179 -0.01589910Melsungen 0.89610461 -0.26077532 -1.15687993Minden -4.41346435 -1.86097394 2.55249041Neuhausen/Erms -5.19170101 -2.37893615 2.81276486N-Lubbecke 0.25675045 0.01812208 -0.23862837RN Lowen 4.98078963 1.39456234 -3.58622729Wetzlar 2.11059608 1.40416340 -0.70643268
You have several great leagues, German, Spanish, after that French, one club from Croatia (RK Zagreb), Denmark, Iceland and Sweden have long tradition in handball, Slovenia has few good clubs, if you visit some of these countries, you can see great handball, especially in Handball Champions League, German and Spanish leagues are the best leagues. Only in this list from Germany I see several excellent clubs from the past or from today, eight great clubs with good reputation: Flensburg, Fuchse Berlin (Fuchse means Foxes, nice uniforms they have), Gumersbach, HSV, Kiel, Lemgo, Magdeburg, Rhein Neckar Lowen...these clubs shaped last decade and current times. I follow handball since 1996, Summer Olympics in Atlanta 1996. Before I was very little to remember and understand the rules. First handball experience and Gold Olympic medal for Croatia. Back than Sweden, Croatia, France, Spain were good, some teams we lost, Romania was good before many years, Russia is also in problems, Germany was great in the last decade, World Cup in Germany and Tunisia, also Summer Olympics in Athens. Fuchse Berlin won against RK Zagreb before few days. There were some bad referee decisions also. At least handball experts say this. Referee decisions are something bad in handball, we can see on every bigger competition errors, bad decisions, wrong judgements, they don't punish passive attacks, attacking and defensive fouls are also funny, some players have "terrier" instincts, so they destroy opponents on the line, handballers have a lot of injuries, only special types of players have good careers, you need have strength, height, speed, tactical knowledge, warrior character, this is not an easy sport, thats why we have around 10 good national teams in this sport, spreading of this sport is not so easy, we see good improvment in South America (Arg, Bra, Chile), Africa (Egypt and Tunisia), Asia (South Korea). Everything else still remains in Europe. It would be interesting to see World Cup Champion outside of Europe.
2012 European Women's Handball Championship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_European_Women's_Handball_Championship Good first day for Czech Republic, France, Croatia and Spain.
2013 World Men's Handball Championship Espana http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_World_Men's_Handball_Championship We have plenty of good teams here. 12. January is the starting date. Don't forget to support your team. Nice halls we can see here. Palau Sant Jordi looks nice.
World Cup is getting closer to the knock-out stage. Small highlights: Croatia - Australia Croatia - Hungary
Croatia - Egypt Croatia handball anthem with their fans during World Cup 2009 in Croatia: Morska vila (eng. Mermaid) Tomorrow is the last day of Group Stage matches. Match of the day is Spain - Croatia. Match for the first place in the Group D. Luka Modric (Real Madrid) during the match against Egypt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_World_Men's_Handball_Championship