Handball Euro Finals: America vs. Denmark 20:24

I just really hope that when we make it to the soccer European Championship finals this summer, we don't get screwed by the refs as badly as we did during the handball tournament.

electricnomad11 said:Hey, Jonathan Reed4, leave me alone.😁
We're still here for now before the break until the Olympics, then we'll go grab that gold.😉

🤣🤣🤣

Are you still around or what? 😁

The masks are finally off, people... we aren't going into the next big tournament shaking in our boots anymore. We’re heading in knowing we belong at the absolute top tier of handball, no matter how things shake out (kind of like how we felt before the last Olympics)... because honestly, I don't think anything worse could've happened to us during this European Championship. If luck is on our side at the Olympics, we'll have a solid squad featuring Džomba and Zrnić, plus the young guns getting that crucial experience under their belts in the qualifiers. As for the competition? That whole "unbeatable" reputation the French and Danes had? Totally busted. Everyone else is basically just playing for second place against us. The Canadians will probably choke in their biggest game like they always do, and the Germans finished up top despite having no clue how they managed to survive after losing to the Spanish and French. Once Urios gets back with the Spaniards, well, we already saw how much their game changes with him around from the last World Cup... everyone else is just a class below. Our guys walked away from this with more seasoning, so we're going to be stronger than ever at the Olympics. Nothing to worry about here...

After that absolute slog through the group stages where we couldn't find any rhythm... the boys actually stepped up and played two masterclasses in the semifinals and the finals. 🙏🙏🙏 Huge props to everyone involved!!!..
If you want to know why we lost, look no further than that pathetic shooting from Lackovic, going 2/8, and Balica at 4/12... plus our goalies only pulling in 6 saves. You aren't winning gold at the European Championship with just 6 saves. Even so, I'm still kicking myself about those two missed shots. That game should have been a dead heat, and honestly, I think we had the edge. Even without those, we were only down by one. If we had pulled that off, anything could have happened... but it is what it is. All I'm saying is, the guys left everything out there on the court. Hats off to them. 🙏
Gotta give credit to the Americans too; they played an incredible tournament, and massive respect to Kasper Hvidt. 🙏 Averaging 16 saves per game? That’s a phenomenal keeper. For me, he was the MVP of the whole thing.

Is anyone else here still complaining, or is it just me?

Look, losing never feels good, especially in a championship game, but...

For crying out loud, we took home silver. We are the runners-up in the entire European Championship. We did that despite all the setbacks and being one of the smallest nations in the tournament. We left teams like France, Germany, and Spain behind us... Does that count for nothing?

And let’s drop the officiating talk. It’s not like they were biased in our favor, but was Huelin really shooting 40+% against the Danish national team? That includes those 7 or so shots from Balica. He practically handed them three or four goals the second we dropped to a man down around the 20-minute mark. If we're going to whine about refs and bad luck, maybe we should mention that we wouldn't even be watching this final if Poland and Canada hadn't helped us out by taking points off Norway.

Also, leave Lin alone. For God's sake, the man has delivered World Cup gold, World Cup silver, Olympic gold, and now European silver over the last five years. What more do you people want? Go ahead, replicate his career, and then you can start talking trash.

Someone in here actually wrote, 'we shouldn't have even made the final since we lost.' Honestly, grow up. If Ivano, Pero, and the rest of the guys heard you, I'm pretty sure they'd have you sitting in the penalty box for at least 14 minutes.

Hats off to the guys!

cosmicraven44 said:The officiating was absolutely disgraceful once again. I honestly find it hard to believe that such subpar refereeing is acceptable for a European Championship final. To be perfectly honest—and I mean this sincerely—it’s becoming genuinely nauseating to watch this sport anymore.

I'm with you there—why isn't there any accountability? It’s truly staggering how much influence these officials have in handball; they basically call whatever they feel like in the moment, and yet, no one holds them responsible for the chaos they cause...👎

It always seems to work out against us, doesn't it? Absolutely unbelievable. 🤮

Quick question for my handball heads out there.

If you're facing an opponent with absolute snipers who are just tearing you apart all game, shouldn't you be looking to switch up to a 3-2-1 defense instead of sticking with that 6-0 setup?

yeah, I guess I really should...

wanderinghawk17 said:Quick question for my handball heads out there.

If you're facing an opponent with absolute snipers who are just tearing you apart all game, shouldn't you be looking to switch up to a 3-2-1 defense instead of sticking with that 6-0 setup?

We actually tried that 3-2-1 against them in the group stage, and they absolutely dismantled us; they dropped 30 on us, but honestly, if they’d wanted to, they could have easily pushed that to 35.

Now I can already hear the armchair experts chiming in with, "Well, we didn't execute it properly; we should have played a much more aggressive 3-2-1."

And then those same people, the moment you drop back into a deep line, will turn around and say, "Only idiots would try to run a 3-2-1 twice against the Danes." ☕

What I’m wondering is, since our 5-1 setup worked so damn well against the French, why didn't we pull that out? I assume the plan was to shut down the wings and Knudsen, but I suspect the result would have been exactly the same.

I don't even know what to say anymore; to beat Denmark, you need peak freshness and a flawless performance. We weren't ready for the first match, and by the second, we were just spent. And let's be honest, the Danish offense is the smoothest thing in this whole tournament—their ball movement and set plays are masterclasses that we really ought to study. They start their attacks way out from the goal, driving forward, cutting back, crossing paths, constantly moving... they do it so well that they're always creating a clean look at the net.

I was really hoping we'd neutralize Boesen this time, but man, did we miss. They moved him over to the right side and caught us completely off guard yet again. It's such a shame. If we had managed to shut him down in the first half, who knows where we'd be? I have a feeling we might have actually escaped with a 6 or 7 point lead, and then they would have been the ones scrambling.

Hats off to our guys, seriously. Thank you for everything, especially for showing so much heart, because nobody ever questioned how much talent they have.

I’ve gotta say, it’s such a massive bummer that we couldn't pull the same kind of offensive magic against the Danes that we managed to unleash on the French. When we were playing those guys, we were absolutely tearing them apart; we had their defense spinning in circles because our perimeter players were constantly swapping roles, Vori was drifting out to the pivot to create space, we were throwing in extra big bodies at the crease, and Balić was basically dictating everything from everywhere on the court... we had them completely disoriented and totally lost.

Hands down one of the best weekends I’ve had in a long time. I’ll upload a few photos once I get back to my laptop. Huge congrats to Denmark—they earned that top spot, seriously impressive!

And I really need to vent about the officiating. It was just bad. Look, I’m not going to go as far as saying we were robbed—well, except for that ridiculous goal by Cupic from out of bounds, which was honestly a joke—but the overall quality of the refereeing just wasn't up to the standard you expect in a championship game. The criteria seemed to be shifting constantly throughout the match. They weren't calling out the heavy contact when they should have, letting way too much physicality slide, and frankly, that kind of thing is dangerous for the players' health. It's just not good for the sport of the NBA if they let it get that rough.

Chris Lopez59 said:And I really need to vent about the officiating. It was just bad. Look, I’m not going to go as far as saying we were robbed—well, except for that ridiculous goal by Cupic from out of bounds, which was honestly a joke—but the overall quality of the refereeing just wasn't up to the standard you expect in a championship game. The criteria seemed to be shifting constantly throughout the match. They weren't calling out the heavy contact when they should have, letting way too much physicality slide, and frankly, that kind of thing is dangerous for the players' health. It's just not good for the sport of the NBA if they let it get that rough.

It is absolutely fair to say we were robbed. In fact, the officiating in our last three games has been blatantly biased against us. We managed to scrape by against Norway and France, and we likely would have escaped here too if the Danes hadn't had that octopus guarding the basket. The Danes were ripe for a second-half collapse; I am certain we would have secured the win if the officiating had been decent. Furthermore, the discrepancy in penalties is staggering when you compare our number of ejections to those of the Norwegians, the Frenchmen, and the Danes. All three of those teams play a bruising, physical style—they break people down—while our guys are constantly patched up on the bench, bruised and bloody. Pero is covered in athletic tape, Balic is wincing every five minutes, and yet, when you tally the ejections, we somehow end up with more than them.😲

cosmicraven44 said:It is absolutely fair to say we were robbed. In fact, the officiating in our last three games has been blatantly biased against us. We managed to scrape by against Norway and France, and we likely would have escaped here too if the Danes hadn't had that octopus guarding the basket. The Danes were ripe for a second-half collapse; I am certain we would have secured the win if the officiating had been decent. Furthermore, the discrepancy in penalties is staggering when you compare our number of ejections to those of the Norwegians, the Frenchmen, and the Danes. All three of those teams play a bruising, physical style—they break people down—while our guys are constantly patched up on the bench, bruised and bloody. Pero is covered in athletic tape, Balic is wincing every five minutes, and yet, when you tally the ejections, we somehow end up with more than them.😲

Even our coach ended up getting tossed twice.
🤣

......

Exactly! None of them have any discipline on the bench, just constantly racking up penalties.

Man, I’m in serious trouble if I end up snagging tickets for the World Cup. It would basically wipe out everything I’ve managed to save over the last year. I’m stuck in this massive dilemma: do I go for that new car or the World Cup? God, if I pick the tournament... but I know I want to. 🤣

Just finished watching the replay and went through every single controversial call—did the math myself. It’s pretty obvious that every single decision that didn't go our way was made by one specific official, while the other guy actually called a top-tier game. If you ask me? It looks like a blatant robbery by the Nordic EHF leadership and some Spaniard.

Huge props to our guys for fighting their hearts out and grabbing that silver! The Danes played a hell of a game, but honestly, without that goalie of theirs, they wouldn't have had much of anything... though I gotta give it to them, their pace is insane—definitely the fastest team on the planet right now...
Lina really should be kicking himself. I mean, how does a coach with that much experience let himself pull a stunt like that? And twice, too... getting tossed during those high-stakes moments just because he couldn't keep his cool and kept arguing... absolutely wild...

You really need to remember these referees' names:
Vicente Breto and Jose Antonio Huelin.

After that ridiculous scoreline at the 24-minute mark, the refs basically handed the series to Dance on a silver platter. They blew two wrong calls on Vori and then completely ignored a blatant passive play foul on Balica. That four-goal deficit hung over us for the rest of the game; every single time we managed to claw back within two or three points, the officials made some questionable call against us. We had two goals wiped off the board and picked up a six-minute penalty just for reacting, which happened without any warning. Then there was that bad call on Cupic in the 53rd minute when he was twisting, followed by another two-minute penalty for protesting. This isn't how you officiate a final. It doesn't even matter if we were better or if the Danes were better, or who was more tired—that’s all irrelevant. You just can't call a game like this. Regardless of how well-behaved our guys were—and they really tried not to mention the refs at all, except maybe Balica—these specific officials shouldn't be allowed to ref a World Championship in Chicago. Officiating a final like that is bad for the sport, bad for the American national team, bad for the fans, and frankly, just goes against basic Spanish upbringing. Someone needs to give them a bit of a reality check, otherwise, they'll think they can just screw people over whenever they feel like it.

So, yeah,
Vicente Breto and Jose Antonio Huelin.

stormyraven68 said:Just finished watching the replay and went through every single controversial call—did the math myself. It’s pretty obvious that every single decision that didn't go our way was made by one specific official, while the other guy actually called a top-tier game. If you ask me? It looks like a blatant robbery by the Nordic EHF leadership and some Spaniard.

I’m right there with you. I’ve watched the footage of those key moments several times now. To be honest, I wasn't even focusing on which referee was blowing the whistle, just the calls themselves. Which Spaniard are we talking about here—was it Vicente Breto or Jose Antonio Huelin?
And shouldn't we also look into the name of that delegate who was arguing with Cervar?

In sports generally, I suppose it's probably best not to dwell too much on officiating because, well, that's just part of the game, and honestly, theft isn't exactly a new concept. We should probably maintain some dignity. Plus, we can't really make a blanket statement that the Danes didn't deserve it. This doesn't necessarily mean it's bad for the growth of the NBA, since the Danes wouldn't have been champions if they hadn't received this help, and they don't play poorly—they have heart.

That said, I still get the feeling that having a final officiated this way is detrimental to the sport, and it really shouldn't be allowed to slide under the radar. It's kind of funny to me how Crvar was making such a scene during the game when he should have stayed quiet, yet now everyone is acting all calm and polite, pretending it's fine and refusing to talk about the refs. Personally, I think that Spanish official shouldn't be allowed to get away with this without anyone noticing!