2024-04-03 04:09:46
Situation
This week, the Lithuanian women’s handball team will play the last two qualifying matches of the European Championships against the teams of Spain and North Macedonia. The Lithuanians will host the Spanish in Vilnius on Wednesday, then travel to the Balkans and play the Macedonians in Skopje on Sunday.
The Lithuanian team has won 2 points in the four matches played so far and shares the third place with the Azerbaijan national team in the selection group. Spanish women’s handball players scored 8 points and secured the first place, the North Macedonian team has 4 points and is second.
31 teams are playing in the selection tournament. The competition takes place in eight groups. The tickets to the European championships will be won by the two strongest teams in each group and the four best third-placed teams.
When ranking the third teams, their results during the matches against the outsiders of the groups will not be counted. Let’s say, if the Lithuanian national team takes third place, and the Azerbaijani women remain fourth, the results of the matches between these teams will be deleted in the ranking of third places.
During the previous selection windows, the Lithuanian national team lost away to Spain 14:47 and at home to North Macedonia 28:31, and in two matches against Azerbaijan they shared a victory each. Lithuanians lost away 33:35, but won at home with a bigger margin 41:26. If these teams win the same number of points, the Lithuanian national team will take a higher place.
Purpose
Arithmetically, the Lithuanian national team can still overtake the North Macedonian team and take the second place in the group. However, the realistic goal is to lose the remaining games by as small a margin as possible and finish among the top four third-placed teams.
The difference in skill in European women’s handball is enormous. In almost all qualifying groups, the leaders are several heads ahead of the third-placed team.
It is likely that six or seven teams will not have a single point in the third-place standings. So far, only the expected third team of the 6th group (Turkey) has taken one point away from stronger rivals.
If there are no thunderous sensations during the last selection window, the ticket holders will be determined by calculating their goal difference in the matches against the two group leaders.
The goal difference of the Lithuanian national team is currently -36 (during the matches against Spain and Macedonia). Lithuania is in fifth place in the virtual table of the third teams.
This table is led by Turkey with one point (Group 6), while the best positions on goal difference are Portugal (-15; in the last qualifying window against the Netherlands and the Czech Republic in Group 3), Greece (-22; in Group 1 with Croatia and Romania) and the Faroe Islands (-22; in the 7th group with Sweden and Iceland).
It is worth noting that this distribution of travel tickets is like a lottery. When the teams of Spain and Lithuania, Denmark and Kosovo or France and Italy are playing, the result is more determined not by the ability of the outsiders to resist, but by the willingness of the favorites to crush or not to crush much weaker rivals. Therefore, the European championships will probably be entered by those teams that will face more merciful favorites.
Tournament
The European Championships will be held on November 28-December 15, 2024 in Austria, Hungary and Switzerland. As many as 24 teams will participate in the tournament for the first time.
The three host teams and the 2022 European champion Norway received the right to play in the final tournament without selection. The national teams of Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Romania, France, Spain and Montenegro have already secured tickets to the European championships in the selection tournament.
Tables of selection groups
Group 1: Romania – 8, Croatia – 4, Greece – 4, Bosnia and Herzegovina – 0.
Group 2: Germany – 6, Ukraine – 6, Slovakia – 2, Israel – 0.
Group 3: Netherlands – 8, Czech Republic – 4, Portugal – 4, Finland – 0.
Group 4: France – 8, Slovenia – 4, Italy – 4, Latvia – 0.
Group 5: Spain – 8, North Macedonia – 4, Lithuania – 2, Azerbaijan – 2.
Group 6: Montenegro – 8, Turkey – 5, Serbia – 3, Bulgaria – 0.
Group 7: Sweden – 8, Faroe Islands – 4, Iceland – 4, Luxembourg – 0.
Group 8: Denmark – 8, Poland – 0, Kosovo – 0.
2024-04-03 04:09:46